Finding easy care sheep traits
To breed easy care sheep, scientists at AgResearch first had to find sheep that expressed the traits they wanted – they did this in stages.
To manage the easy care sheep research efficiently and to ensure ongoing funding, scientists broke the research down into stages, focusing on particular traits at each stage.
Short tails
The first stage of the research involved experimenting with tail length. The main breed used to introduce the short tail was the Finnish Landrace.
Finn sheep
Finn sheep were used in the easy care sheep research for their short tail.
Bare heads and legs
Many sheep breeds have bare heads and legs so these traits were easy to find. Scientists selected Cheviot and Border Leicester breeds for these traits because they were adapted to New Zealand, readily available and cheap.
Border Leicester sheep
Border Leicester sheep were selected for their bare heads and legs.
Bare backsides
East Friesian was the main breed selected for the bare backside trait, although scientists did find that this trait showed up in a number of breeds used in the research. East Friesians also have bare tails and don’t accumulate dags.
East Friesian sheep
East Friesian sheep have a bare backside and tail – traits selected for breeding easy care sheep.
The scientists discovered 2 types of bareness during the research – 1 type that is woolly in winter and becomes bare in summer and another that remains bare. They found it difficult to distinguish one from the other during summer, which is the high-risk period for flystrike, so they used both types.
Bare bellies
The bare belly trait was the slowest to breed into the flock because it’s very uncommon and not found in 1 particular breed. Hoping to achieve this result more quickly, scientists introduced the Wiltshire breed, which naturally shed their wool in summer. The problem with this was that many sheep shed wool from all over their body and not just from their bellies.
Wiltshire sheep
Wiltshire sheep shed their wool naturally and were selected to help achieve the bare belly trait more quickly.
Learning from research
Later in the research, the scientists introduced the Texel breed, which is a more recent breed in New Zealand, imported in 1990. They found Texel to be a good breed for all the traits except the short tail. It may even be possible for the Texel and Finn breeds alone to be used to incorporate all the traits more quickly.
Texel sheep
Texel sheep exhibit all the easy care traits except a short tail.
The International Sheep Genomics Consortium used the Texel sheep breed in their genome-mapping project.
The scientists experimented with a number of other breeds, which they learned from but didn’t continue using in this research.
Having completed the research, Dr David Scobie points out that they could have started with a number of different breeds and ended up with a similar result, and this is what they encourage breeders to do. There are many breeds of sheep with the desired traits to choose from. If a wide variety of breeds are used to create sheep with easy care traits, there will be greater diversity.
Activity ideas
Use these activities with your students to extend their learning:
Selective sheep breeding noisy round robin and PMI – consider the harms and benefits (consequences) of easy care sheep breeding
Easy care sheep traits – three-level reading guide – use this as a strategy to locate, interpret and apply information to consider the role of research in finding easy care sheep traits
Ethics in sheep breeding – ready-made unit plan.
Useful links
The following websites provide more information about the main sheep breeds used in the easy care sheep research.
Wiltshire: www.wiltshire-sheep.co.nz
Border Leicester: https://nzsheep.co.nz/border-leicester
Finnsheep: https://nzsheep.co.nz/finnsheep
East Friesian: https://nzsheep.co.nz/east-friesian
Cheviot: www.rarebreeds.co.nz/cheviot.html
