Romney NZ Ltd
Romney New Zealand is out to help the breed reclaim the centre stage in the sheep industry. Among the measures adopted is a new venture sending Romney wool to Nepal and getting that wool back in hand knotted carpets and wall hangings.
In the last decade or so Romney sheep breeders have been working away at re-establishing the breeds dominant status in the farming sector. Among the measures theyve undertaken is a roadshow, new labeling, the hiring of a consultant to guide change in their organization and a new venture with their wool into Nepal.
Romney sheep still make up about half the national ewe flock and breeders say theres a shift back to farmers who have crossbred their flocks in the last few years. They point out that the breed has sheep that are the equal of any breed available. What they are aiming to do is make performance recording compulsory a practice that is already common among Romney breeders.
Those charged with marketing the breed say theres a strong feeling among Romney breeders that the breed has an extremely sound base to launch themselves from. One area of emphasis will be on ewe efficiency and what goes out the gate on the truck rather than the traditional focus on lambing percentages. As part of this focus on a saleable meat yield is a ongoing research project.
The shipping of wool to Nepal to be converted into rugs offers the chance of trebling returns on wool. John Bates says the idea grew out of an attempt 5 years ago to get Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to support a project using wool in Nepal to help create jobs.
That move failed but the idea grew wings. Romney NZ Ltd started supplying wool to Nepal around 18months ago themselves.
In January 2008 a shipment of 16 tonnes of strong wool by New Zealand Romney's marketing arm, Romney New Zealand, went to Nepal.
The farmers supplying the wool get a return of at least $10/kg. On the open market clean wool has been as low as $2.80/kg.
In a trial of 2500kg in September 2007, farmers deferred payment for 120 days and shipped fleece to India and trucked it to Nepal at their expense.
The wool was made into handcrafted carpets by Kathmandu company, Soorya.
The carpet was bought by Romney New Zealand, an organisation of 130 ram breeders with 3000 clients, and is being sold at its shop, Fibre, in Greytown, Wairarapa, set up two months ago.
Farmers carried the risk by retaining ownership of the wool, but stood to gain a three-fold return and were investing in their future.
The sole focus of the company was to maximise returns for farmers.
The wall and floor rugs were being made in a range of designs from Tibetan-style to contemporary and corporate customers and clients for custom-made carpets were being targeted. Hand-crafted rugs take eight to 12 weeks to complete and retail in New Zealand for about $400 a metre.
Nepal's government had to introduce legislation to allow the wool to be brought into the country for handcrafting under the no-cost arrangement.
Theres a shop in Greytown that sells the carpets and wall hangings.
Ram breeders leading the project were last week met in January with plans to expand wool deliveries, introduce overseas sales and open more outlets.
The business is a win win for all parties. The Nepalese company usually bought wool on the international market and the fact that they werent paying any up-front costs on the Romney deal had really helped them.
The long term goal was to sell about 75% of the wool from 3000 Romney farmers through the Nepalese deal.
John Bates says directly sourcing wool from New Zealand farmers gave the carpets traceability, more accurate labelling and a marketing advantage over other products.
There were also quality assurance benefits the carpets are hand made with a deep pile. Each rug will have a farm of origin. He said close New Zealand and Nepal ties through the late Sir Edmund Hillary had made it easier to form the partnership.
They were also targeting the corporate market that may for example want a company coat of arms or something similar.
Another positive was that farmers were taking ownership of the product.
Lambs wool will likely be trialled in Nepal and Bangladesh for knitwear products.
The Saleable Meat Yieldproject is being overseen by Jon Hickford.
Romney NZ has supported a three-year research project looking to identify Romney sires that perform highly for saleable meat yield and yet retain the other positive attributes that the breed has.
The project, which started back in 2006/07, is one of the biggest of its kind in New Zealand and is funded by corporate sponsors and rams breeders.
The first installment of results from the three-year progeny test was presented to Romney breeders during their recent annual conference held in Gore.
Corrected to a 17kg carcase weight (CW) the results show a difference of $4.32/lamb in the saleable meat value between lambs of the highest and lowest ranking rams.
For a ewe flock selling 3000 works lambs each year this means a difference of $13,000 in potential income.
The progeny test's primary objective is to identify superior dual-purpose sires that have proven higher saleable meat yield than their contemporaries. However, it is also creating additional opportunities to compare other commercially important traits such as those associated with lamb survival and growth rate.
John Bates says while the progeny test highlights the maternal strengths of the Romney breed, it also identifies opportunities where specific genetic improvement needs to be made.
"As well as identifying sires that are performing in key areas of lamb survival, growth rate and saleable meat yield, the progeny test results are also setting a base line of the breed's performance and where improvement has to be made".
The results also highlight the merits of using a selection index approach combining growth rate and saleable meat yield to identify top meat-producing sires.
Compared with the industry average the saleable meat yield of the Romney was less in the shoulder, average in the loin areas and better than average in the leg. The loins of some progeny groups also tended to be elongated rather than rounded, suggesting that these lambs were immature when slaughtered.
The 35 rams in this year's progeny test are all ranked amongst the top 20% on SIL's Dual Purpose overall Index (DPO). They were single sire mated to 60 randomly allocated commercial Romney flock ewes for 17 days (one cycle). In addition two reference sires were used on both properties to link the two progeny test sites' progeny test together.
Seventeen North Island rams were evaluated this season on John Jackson's Wairarapa property. The 18 rams chosen from amongst South Island breeders were evaluated on Hugh Taylor's North Canterbury property, Gleneyre.
All ram lambs born on the Wairarapa site were slaughtered at 17-18 kg CW and then boned out by Progressive Meats to establish their saleable meat yield.
As well as weighing and tagging each lamb at birth, a Lincoln honours student is autopsing each dead lamb to determine actual causes of death.
As well as recording their birthweights, birth rank, sex and dam number, all lambs, their dams and sires have been DNA typed to determine the presence of the cold tolerance gene marker.
Lamb drop per sire group varied from 153% to 183%.
Any lambs that died up to five days of age were post-mortemed on the day they were found dead.
In the last decade or so Romney sheep breeders have been working away at re-establishing the breeds dominant status in the farming sector. Among the measures theyve undertaken is a roadshow, new labeling, the hiring of a consultant to guide change in their organization and a new venture with their wool into Nepal.
Romney sheep still make up about half the national ewe flock and breeders say theres a shift back to farmers who have crossbred their flocks in the last few years. They point out that the breed has sheep that are the equal of any breed available. What they are aiming to do is make performance recording compulsory a practice that is already common among Romney breeders.
Those charged with marketing the breed say theres a strong feeling among Romney breeders that the breed has an extremely sound base to launch themselves from. One area of emphasis will be on ewe efficiency and what goes out the gate on the truck rather than the traditional focus on lambing percentages. As part of this focus on a saleable meat yield is a ongoing research project.
The shipping of wool to Nepal to be converted into rugs offers the chance of trebling returns on wool. John Bates says the idea grew out of an attempt 5 years ago to get Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to support a project using wool in Nepal to help create jobs.
That move failed but the idea grew wings. Romney NZ Ltd started supplying wool to Nepal around 18months ago themselves.
In January 2008 a shipment of 16 tonnes of strong wool by New Zealand Romney's marketing arm, Romney New Zealand, went to Nepal.
The farmers supplying the wool get a return of at least $10/kg. On the open market clean wool has been as low as $2.80/kg.
In a trial of 2500kg in September 2007, farmers deferred payment for 120 days and shipped fleece to India and trucked it to Nepal at their expense.
The wool was made into handcrafted carpets by Kathmandu company, Soorya.
The carpet was bought by Romney New Zealand, an organisation of 130 ram breeders with 3000 clients, and is being sold at its shop, Fibre, in Greytown, Wairarapa, set up two months ago.
Farmers carried the risk by retaining ownership of the wool, but stood to gain a three-fold return and were investing in their future.
The sole focus of the company was to maximise returns for farmers.
The wall and floor rugs were being made in a range of designs from Tibetan-style to contemporary and corporate customers and clients for custom-made carpets were being targeted. Hand-crafted rugs take eight to 12 weeks to complete and retail in New Zealand for about $400 a metre.
Nepal's government had to introduce legislation to allow the wool to be brought into the country for handcrafting under the no-cost arrangement.
Theres a shop in Greytown that sells the carpets and wall hangings.
Ram breeders leading the project were last week met in January with plans to expand wool deliveries, introduce overseas sales and open more outlets.
The business is a win win for all parties. The Nepalese company usually bought wool on the international market and the fact that they werent paying any up-front costs on the Romney deal had really helped them.
The long term goal was to sell about 75% of the wool from 3000 Romney farmers through the Nepalese deal.
John Bates says directly sourcing wool from New Zealand farmers gave the carpets traceability, more accurate labelling and a marketing advantage over other products.
There were also quality assurance benefits the carpets are hand made with a deep pile. Each rug will have a farm of origin. He said close New Zealand and Nepal ties through the late Sir Edmund Hillary had made it easier to form the partnership.
They were also targeting the corporate market that may for example want a company coat of arms or something similar.
Another positive was that farmers were taking ownership of the product.
Lambs wool will likely be trialled in Nepal and Bangladesh for knitwear products.
The Saleable Meat Yieldproject is being overseen by Jon Hickford.
Romney NZ has supported a three-year research project looking to identify Romney sires that perform highly for saleable meat yield and yet retain the other positive attributes that the breed has.
The project, which started back in 2006/07, is one of the biggest of its kind in New Zealand and is funded by corporate sponsors and rams breeders.
The first installment of results from the three-year progeny test was presented to Romney breeders during their recent annual conference held in Gore.
Corrected to a 17kg carcase weight (CW) the results show a difference of $4.32/lamb in the saleable meat value between lambs of the highest and lowest ranking rams.
For a ewe flock selling 3000 works lambs each year this means a difference of $13,000 in potential income.
The progeny test's primary objective is to identify superior dual-purpose sires that have proven higher saleable meat yield than their contemporaries. However, it is also creating additional opportunities to compare other commercially important traits such as those associated with lamb survival and growth rate.
John Bates says while the progeny test highlights the maternal strengths of the Romney breed, it also identifies opportunities where specific genetic improvement needs to be made.
"As well as identifying sires that are performing in key areas of lamb survival, growth rate and saleable meat yield, the progeny test results are also setting a base line of the breed's performance and where improvement has to be made".
The results also highlight the merits of using a selection index approach combining growth rate and saleable meat yield to identify top meat-producing sires.
Compared with the industry average the saleable meat yield of the Romney was less in the shoulder, average in the loin areas and better than average in the leg. The loins of some progeny groups also tended to be elongated rather than rounded, suggesting that these lambs were immature when slaughtered.
The 35 rams in this year's progeny test are all ranked amongst the top 20% on SIL's Dual Purpose overall Index (DPO). They were single sire mated to 60 randomly allocated commercial Romney flock ewes for 17 days (one cycle). In addition two reference sires were used on both properties to link the two progeny test sites' progeny test together.
Seventeen North Island rams were evaluated this season on John Jackson's Wairarapa property. The 18 rams chosen from amongst South Island breeders were evaluated on Hugh Taylor's North Canterbury property, Gleneyre.
All ram lambs born on the Wairarapa site were slaughtered at 17-18 kg CW and then boned out by Progressive Meats to establish their saleable meat yield.
As well as weighing and tagging each lamb at birth, a Lincoln honours student is autopsing each dead lamb to determine actual causes of death.
As well as recording their birthweights, birth rank, sex and dam number, all lambs, their dams and sires have been DNA typed to determine the presence of the cold tolerance gene marker.
Lamb drop per sire group varied from 153% to 183%.
Any lambs that died up to five days of age were post-mortemed on the day they were found dead.