My interest in sheep started young. I can remember being 4 or 5 years old and sneaking up to the woolshed about 80m from our homestead at Park Farm. The homestead was built by my great grandfather Samuel in 1880, so with all of the creaky floor boards and squeaky doors it took a considerable amount of effort to get out of the house unnoticed. Once up at the woolshed, I couldn't get in because the big old sliding door was too heavy so i squeezed through the rails into the underneath night-pen amongst some rather startled Perendale ewes and clambered up the ramp into the upper story. Now covered in sheep shit, I was in my element and began sorting the ewes for type and size. I could remember family groups, or at least I thought I could, and before long I stood atop the catching pen on the first stand admiring my work as the Perry ewes looked back at me - eyes wide, nostrils flared, each of them ready to wriggle on the board all day.

I think about those Perendales quite often. Grandad Norman was a very early adopter of the Perendale and followed Sir Geoffry Peren's work very closely. I have the 8th edition of "The Perendale" book on my bedside table to this day. Norm was very passionate about prime lamb and carcass quality and would enter his Southdown x Perendale lambs into the meat export awards, winning it in 1974. Norm used to tell me that the old Romneys we had used to get cast a fair bit and were not as good at tidying up crop paddocks as the Perendale. He noticed a significant jump in lambs weaned from the first cross with the Cheviot and loved the finer grained meat and leaner carcass that they offered. I wish Norm could have seen the influence the Texel has had on carcasses around NZ today and he would love to see the shape of our SufTex rams - it would make him hungry I reckon, he was a big bugger with hands the size of dinner plates!

My mum's dad, Grandad George, was equally firm on his case for the Coopworth. Mum was born on a farm on the edge of Fairlie called Eversley. George was adamant that the Coopworth had more lambs that grew far more quickly than the Romney and they cut just as much wool, something that was a knock on the Perendale in those early years. 

I don't mind what breed people farm, it has nothing to do with me. What I noticed in both of my grandfathers' approaches was that the sheep had a job to do. All of our sheep have a job to do. Our farms are all unique, often governed by the weather and seasonal signatures. In Norm's case, he had crop stubble to eat and recognised the benefits of turning that stubble into something the soil could use, rather than burning it as many used to do. I don't think George loved sheep all that much, so if he was going to farm them they better make him some bloody money!

I looked at a photo of our Romneys from 1913 from the annuls of our photo boxes at Park Farm, to my surprise the Romneys back then look just like today. Clearer pointed, no wool on their legs, barrelled bodies, and plainer muzzles, almost like some of the RomTex type sheep you see today. It was the lunge towards fleece weight in the 50's that changed the Romney a fair bit, something I don't think I will breed.

Fast forward till today and the New Zealand Romney is a different beast. I certainly think Norm would be proud of what the Kaituna Romney is. Although we each settled on different breeds, my interest in being an early adopter and to find answers for myself are something that runs through all of us in the Gane family. 

When I was going through the process of starting the stud, I did analysis on every breed of commercial significance in NZ. I looked at Coopdales, Romworths, Composites, Romdales, Perendales, all the Texel variations of those and Romneys. I had an excel sheet with a point scoring system which served as a box-ticking exercise for each of those breeds - what had to be eliminated, however, were some of the traditional views of these breeds. Romneys don't grow, Texels and Perrys aren't fertile, Coopworths have bad mouths - plenty of muck is thrown across the table, none of it actually matters. Sheep have changed a lot in the last 20 years and there is almost as much variation within breeds as there is between them. Pick a breed you like, and work towards the traits you want.

My main considerations were finding a sheep that could tolerate the natural conditions we have at Kaituna Ridges. My father, Murray, remarked that Perendales would look good up there, as we both looked up Middle Gully and it's vertical eastern wall. He was right, they would - but I felt that 6-month shearing was important to the operation, not that you 'can't' 6-month shear Perendales, but for high quality yarn we really do need to be north of 85mm staple length. I also think that as we look into the future, chemicals should have less importance to Agriculture, not more. 6-month shearing takes us a step closer to less chemical input. So, in spite of wool being $2/kg at the time, staple length was important - that pointed toward the Rom and Coop types.

Wool is a product that most of us grow and I feel we have lost sight of the fact that it is something that has its own process and minimum specs to adhere too. It has become a by-product of sorts and is talked about as such. Wool as a fibre is important to me because when we think about clothing and textiles globally, it also takes us one step closer to less chemicals not more - just like 6-month shearing. 

Another consideration, aside from the terrain, was our rainfall and swampy flats. We flood regularly, often having stock standing in water for extended periods as they wait for their owner to scheme a rescue plan. And even once refuge is found on a hill somewhere, our hills can be sodden for months on end with nothing to wear feet down on. The topic of 'Feet' amongst sheep breeders always stirs some emotion. The Romney has always been pretty adept at handling soggy ground and considering we had an Oregon bred flock, Keith Higgins' fussy approach to feet had not gone unnoticed. I think Keith had about the best feet in the industry in terms of structure and resilience. I have since bought plenty of Romneys and some other breeds that were pretty weak on the resilience front, but looked good at the time of purchase. The Oregon set-up was full of feet that lasted. A tick for the Romney we already had.

Reproduction and Growth - one of the key strengths of a sheep is its ability to potentially wean its body weight in lamb every year. All of the breeds I looked at were pretty good on this front, you can scan wherever you want to scan within a breed if you use feeding and genetics as your levers. I wanted a sheep without hyper-fecundity though. We don't want a 220% scanning having just come out of a drought and heading straight into 100 days of fog and floods. Looking at our commercial ewes, 170% - 175% suits us in terms of ewe wastage and prime lambs. I haven't been able to get the stud ewes down to 170% (with feed as the lever), they seem to have settled around 180% without flushing and mated either on a hill or in eczema prone paddocks. They were, however, flushed in the first year and they scanned 202% - too high for our country in my opinion- all the breeds ticked the reproduction box I felt.

Worm Tolerance - If we think about the greatest threats to sheep production on the farm, for us it's internal parasites no.1, pneumonia no.2, eczema no.3. We regularly will have sheep dealing with all 3, that's when they develop a disease that I call Shit-Sheep-itis. Whilst eczema is something we are folding into our flock, with pasture spore counts increasing to 500,000 in some paddocks - worms are the main threat that can have an effect on all sheep, all the time. Drench resistance just recently was labelled the biggest threat to NZ sheep and beef as per the Beef&Lamb survey. We can argue all day as we try to reason how and why we have gotten such a blunt drop off in drench efficacy, but the simplest way to say it is we have drenched too much. The antidote to drenching too much, is not drenching at all. The further away from "zero' you get, the closer to drench resistance you get. I want to be far away from it.

-In order to find a sheep that would suit our environment and be able to handle what has become a NIL drench system, I set about buying resistant rams and resilient rams. Everyone had an opinion as to why I should go to resistance, few mentioned resilience although it made more sense to me in the quest to drench less. So I did what all Ganes would do, I went to find out for myself. I won't mention too much about the studs I purchased from, since I deeply respect anyone who has the time and patience to breed stud stock. I can say we had some highly resistant ewes and rams to evaluate, and some very resilient rams. Playing around for a couple of years and trying to find the limits of these animals (which I found quite quickly), the resilient based lambs were a heck of a lot bigger at weaning and a decent amount less daggy too.

An interesting line I do hear a bit is that becoming more resistant means you have cleaner pastures and in isolation this is true. I think the average level of resistance across most sheep in NZ could be better and improved production could be achieved. I do have a couple of issues with the claim that more resistance=cleaner pastures though, but first we need to be clear up that all healthy adult sheep are net-removers of worms. This is a piece of critical information often forgotten about. We might be able to shift levels of absolute parasite control in adults, but if they are naturally healthy adults the difference is unimportant in our quest to drench less. We also need to remember that all internal parasites are pathogens that rely on a host to reproduce, they aren't 'interested' in killing all of our sheep, although they might skittle a few weak ones. They rely on the host being there to ensure the survival of their species. Even if we wanted them to be at 'zero' we could never eliminate them and we know we don't need to eliminate them to be productive. There is also the fact that we have run the most brutal selection regime since the early 60's for worms. Our worms are some of the most resilient creatures on the planet! Not only have they survived and adapted to all of the different anthelmintic options on the market, but they have survived tillage, snow, frosts, floods, droughts, cross-species grazing, DDT, 2-4D, Lorsban, synthetic pyrethroids, high-acid fertilisers, the list goes on - and they are stronger than ever. By direct comparison, our sheep flock has not been selected for with anywhere near the brutality our internal parasites have and without serious selection, our bank accounts will lose. 

So when we talk about resilience/resistance in sheep, we are really talking about the first 12-months of life, and I would argue the first 8-months of life since that is where a larger difference between sheep can be found. It stands to reason that a resilient sheep, which is deemed as such because of an ability to grow in spite of burden, will have excess energy to 'spend' once it is fully grown. Lincoln University in their resilience work, sites that resilient sheep develop their immunity at more or less the same rate as a resistant sheep. 

So getting back to the whole 'cleaner pastures' thing. 70-75% of all lambs born in NZ are slaughtered each year. If we are looking at our young stock as the object of debate, surely it is important to look at growth rate or number of days 'till slaughter as a companion to fecal egg counts. You might have a lamb with a FEC of 2000 eggs/g that is killable at 90days of age. Once that lamb is slaughtered its FEC is zero, and should count as such until the last lamb of that cohort reaches a killable weight - it also isn't eating any grass that something else can eat. Now the argument might be that you could get the same growth with a lower FEC, but there will be a level of resistance that is too energy intensive to want to drive it any further. I personally think that rather than focusing on 'cleaner pastures' which is still admirable on paper, we would be better to focus on who wants to grow the most with the least amount of help, since we know all healthy adults are net-removers anyway. In my opinion, your lambs job is to grow, not to remove worms. A lamb that's not growing is a problem, a flock of lambs not growing is totally unworkable.

One thing I was eager to explore is the immunity of these more resilient sheep. It was unlikely that a resilient sheep had a 'bad' immune system. Was the immunological capacity of a lamb antagonistic to growth? or was it the immunological propensity of a lamb that was antagonistic to growth? In other words, what I though we could breed was a sheep that was very healthy and supported by a great immune system, but it would only allocate energy to an immune response when it absolutely had to in order to stay healthy, rather than having an immune system that's highly geared to 'fight' - which possibly could be a waste of energy and detract from growth.

My anecdotes of what I was seeing are just that - not based on science. I have noticed doing the resilience protocol that the ones who can grow at significant rates the longest never have the highest FEC though. Those same animals never have the lowest FEC either. It is feasible that the most effective sheep in a NIL drench system is 'moderating' its worm burden to an acceptable level, say Fec 800 - 1500 eggs/g and still able to grow at 300g/day+ with no drench. The ones with a FEC of 5,000+ are quite reliably going backwards. The ones with a FEC of 50, 80, 200 are not growing either. Food for thought but traits often work in balance. All of the more resilient sheep will eventually get their FEC down to very low levels, which is why I think it is more of an immunological capacity/propensity argument than a resistance/resilience argument. They all have good immune systems, it is just deciding when to use them.

All that is to say, we found our own genetic line that had used Oregon blood for 20+ years, and Albie Higgins (Keith's uncle and previous owner of Kaituna Ridges) breeding for 40 years prior to that, to have the best suitability for our environment. Perhaps not a huge surprise with the unfair advantage of being screened through Kaituna Ridges for all those years. We have had some excellent impact from a few outside sires though, something we will continue to look for. A tick for the Romney I spose.

The final consideration of major importance was the size of the gene pool and the collaboration that has taken place within the Romney breed. I'll just say it, without the WRIG group and the other development groups around the place, the Perendale and Coopworth would have killed the Romney. Argue amongst yourselves, but that's how it appears to me. I like the vast array of Romneys on the market, many in the north where eczema and Barber's Pole are bad, just like home. I'm also not majorly opposed to cross-breeding a little bit anyway. It's a tool, and we need tools. When cross-breeding, we need to remember that you don't just get the 'good' traits from each breed, you'll get things you don't like or want too. In 2026, we used a Romdale .6FE tested ram from Raupuha, I don't know how the cross has worked out yet but there's some pointy ears out there Russell! I look forward to lifting the height of the top yard rail, yet again.  

For our ram catalogue, it should be noted, the breed composition will be visible. I don't want to be "Kaituna Romneys" and sell Romworths or Romdales, it will all be out in the open for people to see and the records are true and accurate for each sheep. I aim to be 100% Romney wherever possible to reach our goals, but not all of our sheep are 100% Romney - probably 90% of the flock are straight Rom though.

After the first season with the stud I have found myself thinking we can't afford not to lamb our hoggets. Hogget performance relies on all the things adult performance does, with the added pressure of having to grow in a NIL drench system, prove early fertility an maximal worm tolerance, prove good pelvic opening and ease of lambing all whilst fighting worms, eczema and under marginal management. I'll be quick to add, I don't think its super important for all commercial farmers to lamb hoggets, but at the stud level it turns the dial up to 100 for the traits that will ensure we remain highly productive and reliable.

So with all of the back and forth we have settled on Romneys, uninspiring I know. To rub salt in the wound we also have Angus cattle - Jesus Fred I thought you were an early adopter.

Well we have adopted some forward thinking protocols, and whatever the future holds for drench resistance, the antidote will always be NIL drench. I operate with a little saying "If you can't do it in 20 years time, don't do it now". It's a way of looking forward and affording yourself at least the benefit of time to overcome the challenges you think you might face. We all find it easy to get stuck on the mouse-wheel of seasonal work and day to day firefighting, but sometimes we need to look for things that can break the cycle. If I can't solve problems that dad and grandad had, then I'm leaving them to our kids and something tells me they will have plenty of their own problems to fix with this world we live in.

Cheers,

Fred Gane.