Early sheep imports to New Zealand
Renewed interest in 'exotic' sheep breeds
Disease concerns
Recent imports
Why the need for new sheep breeds?
Where are the official records?
The national archives
By Dr Clive Dalton
Introduction to Blog series
This is the first of a series of blog posts on the importation of exotic sheep breeds to New Zealand in the 1970s and 1980s. The stimulus for the blogs was to record what I consider to be an important bit of New Zealand agricultural history - which I have grave doubts will ever be prized out of official government files, if anyone today would even know where to look.
Introduction to Blog series
This is the first of a series of blog posts on the importation of exotic sheep breeds to New Zealand in the 1970s and 1980s. The stimulus for the blogs was to record what I consider to be an important bit of New Zealand agricultural history - which I have grave doubts will ever be prized out of official government files, if anyone today would even know where to look.
Early sheep arrivals New Zealand
All sheep are ‘exotic’ to New Zealand, but for some reason, the
sheep breeds imported in 1972 and 1984 are always referred to as ‘exotic
importations’ or 'exotic breeds'. Over the early
history of New Zealand and the arrival of the first Europeans, long
before
there was any concern about introducing diseases, an amazing array of
sheep
breeds was brought here from all parts of the world, but for a variety
of
reasons they didn’t survive. The early flock books of the New Zealand Sheep
Breeders’ Association record the importation of 30 different breeds.
There seemed to have been no problems with Scrapie arriving in
New Zealand with any of these sheep. Sheep scab was a far greater threat
which was eliminated by 1894.
Old references show that between 1893 and 1914 the following breeds were imported:
- Border Leicester
- Leicester
- Cheviot
- Cotswold
- Dartmoor
- Dorset Horn
- English Leicester
- Hampshire
- Lincoln
- Merino
- Oxford Down
- Romney Marsh
- Roscommon
- Ryeland
- Scottish Blackface
- Shropshire
- Shropshire Down
- Southdown
- Suffolk
- Tunis
- Wensleydale
 |
| Scottsh Blacface - came to New Zealand in the late 1800s but didn't stay. The sheep in this photo with mottled brown faces are 'mules' or 'greyfaces' - Border Leicester or Blue faced Hexham Leicester x SBF. Photo by Don Clegg. |
Renewed interest in 'exotic' sheep breeds
I
was
an interested observer at the time as I had arrived from UK in 1968 to do hill country sheep and beef research, and because
of my involvement with Sheeplan (see my blogs), I started trying to
remember bits and pieces about the ‘exotic sheep importation saga’.
More questions than answers
I seemed
to dredge up more questions than answers, so I had to dig out some of my old
MAF mates, (for some sadly it was too late) who were closely involved at
the time, and it was interesting trolling through their memories. Some scored well and some badly – but
they all could tell me who they thought would probably still remember – if they were
still above ground!
So
I’ve
had a big catchup with many old Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries
(MAF) former colleagues, and they have all been supportive of my attempts to
find out as much
as possible of events, as there’s no doubt that in years to come, after
all of
us have been collected in the final straggle muster, somebody will want
to
bring more sheep to New Zealand, and they’ll want answers to three
obvious
questions:
- When was the last sheep importation to NZ?
- What happened?
- Where is the information and will Mr Google be able to find it
This
is not some hypothetical dream for the distant future. New Zealand could get Foot and Mouth
disease tomorrow, and if livestock in large areas of the country had to be
slaughtered to contain the disease, importation would be a logical option.
So
that’s why I’ve blogged what I’ve been able to find about what happened with the exotic sheep imports. Clearly there’s a high risk of error
as the human memory has its limits, especially for events that happened three
decades ago. So I’d be very
grateful for any corrections of the blogged material that I have missed, and especially for new material.
The big worry - where is the official record?
When I visited my former MAF Ruakura colleague Dr Neil Clarke, he had
pulled out a couple of the many cardboard boxes he took away with him
when he retired from MAFTech Ruakura Genetics. If he'd left them, without doubt
they would be in the dump as the Genetics section wound down to near
extinction.
Thankfully Neil kept copies of all the material he wrote to go up through the system, but as we concluded - that's where our knowledge ends. Those boxes are a treasure trove - with no known destination after Neil's office finally closes.
We both agreed that none of our offspring would want our 'stuff', and in any case they would have no room to store it in their own homes. They have enough stuff of their own!
And no museum or library wants it, as they claim they have not space either. And who would digitalise it?
Question
3 is the big worry, as where would the official files of events be found now? Nobody
I have talked to who worked for MAF at that time has any idea where the information
went; they all have to conclude that it would go into the big black hole we used to call ‘Head Office’.
 |
| Dr Neil Clarke |
Thankfully Neil kept copies of all the material he wrote to go up through the system, but as we concluded - that's where our knowledge ends. Those boxes are a treasure trove - with no known destination after Neil's office finally closes.
We both agreed that none of our offspring would want our 'stuff', and in any case they would have no room to store it in their own homes. They have enough stuff of their own!
And no museum or library wants it, as they claim they have not space either. And who would digitalise it?
 |
| Dr Leyden Baker |
Other MAF Genetics staff on retirement thankfully took copies of their bits of the story with them, and some like Dr Leyden Baker told me he'd had a big clean out and his stuff had just gone to the dump.
The problem is that there have been so many changes from MAF to MAFTech then to AgResearch, with short-term ‘managers’ with no institutional memory or knowledge or appreciation of history.
The old colleagues I've managed to find all assure me that their original reports and copies of data etc were
all send up through the MAFTech pipeline, which they assumed ended up in MAF Head
Office in Wellington. So goodness knows where it
all is now that MAF has recently morphed into the Ministry of Primary
Industry (MPI) with the Minister about 13th on the caucus pecking order. You can predict from this that New Zealand's agricultural history would not figure highly in the scheme of things.
The national archive
MAF used
to have an in-house archivist in the Wellington Head Office, and I have been
told that all MAF/MPI archival material is now in the National Archive. So let’s hope the exotic sheep import
story is nicely filed and readily accessible in there.
Prospects do not look good though, as when my former MAF Information Services Director, Geoff Moss recently spent a morning at the National Archive in Wellington to find me a photo of Dr Sam Jamieson (see later blogs), he described the experience as - 'bureaucratic and complicated'!
Prospects do not look good though, as when my former MAF Information Services Director, Geoff Moss recently spent a morning at the National Archive in Wellington to find me a photo of Dr Sam Jamieson (see later blogs), he described the experience as - 'bureaucratic and complicated'!
A
concern now is what’s going to happen to the files of these old retired MAF retainers
after their final muster. Most of
them agree that their families won’t want their ‘stuff’, as they’ll have no room
to store it - so it will add to landfill and global warming. Important agricultural history is going
down the offal hole I’m afraid, but nobody seems to be able to stop it.
Any historians interested?
I
once tried to make contact with the newly appointed head of the History
Department at Waikato University, as the University had been built on
land
which was once a Ruakura dairy unit – so I presumed (wrongly ) that it
may have had a bit of empathy for the
cause. Also the University is a major partner of the massive National Fieldays ( photo left) proving their great support for the industry in a major farming area. But making contact was impossible. I have not tried again.
Recent sheep importations
The importation of sheep into New Zealand from all countries
except Australia was banned in 1952 after a case of Scrapie was found (see other
blogs), so in the 1970s when interest grew to import a range of different European
and UK breeds which were deemed to have desirable traits for New Zealand,
plenty of pressure was put on the then Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries
(MAF) to view the request with great caution.
The main reason for the importation was to see how some new breeds,
which had shown to have potential in UK and Europe could improve mainly
fertility and meat production, as wool was not a priority.
Why the need for new sheep?
Without doubt, the driving force behind the importation was the
Ruakura genetics team of Drs Alan Carter, Neil Clarke (and later Drs Leyden
Baker, Howard Meyer and Andrew Parrat). The Genetics
Section was also well staffed with technicians to supervise all stock work and
data collection from an importation, which clearly everyone involved saw as no
small challenge. Finding new ‘genetic resources’ was a fruitful area for research, as national meat and lamb performance in the 1950-60s certainly needed a boost, and researchers knew that their work would attract big farmer interest. Regular progress reports would be in demand and help fill conference halls for many years ahead. Then the resulting published papers would help scientists’ reputations and promotion, as well as adding to the great reservoir of scientific knowledge. It all looked very exciting.
Photo: Dr Alan Carter. Photo taken by MAF Ruakura's long-serving photographer, the late Don 'whiskers' McQueen who worked with equal skill in both laboratory and field. Don was a legend! Photo AgResearch archives.
