Romney sheep
[1] The sheep recognized by 1800 as "Romney Marsh" or "Kent" were improved in body type and fleece quality through crossings with Bakewell's English Leicester.
With these and a further 30 ewes sent in 1856, Alfred Ludlum established New Zealand's first Romney Marsh stud in 1860 at Newry, in the Hutt Valley, and Ludlam's brother-in-law, Augustus Onslow Manby Gibbes, also bred them around this time in Australia at his famous sheep property, Yarralumla.
[6] The New Zealand export lamb trade started in 1882 with a shipment aboard the Dunedin of 4,900 frozen carcasses to London's Smithfield Market.
After 1932, the technology for shipping chilled fresh meat by sea (and later by air) further enhanced the export trade.
[8] New Zealand itself began exporting after the sensational win of Ernest Short's Parorangi ram at the Argentine International Exhibition in 1906.
Health requirements in recent decades have made New Zealand and Australia almost the only breeding ground for exported Romney seed stock, with Brazil, Uruguay, the Falklands, the U.S., and England, itself, some of the recipient countries.
Henry Fell, in Intensive Sheep Management posits that the Romney is, "A breed which ha[s] all the virtues save one, that of prolificacy [...] will thrive happily at extraordinary densities and seems to enjoy it.
"[9] A number of large Romney flocks in New Zealand have in the last several decades achieved better than 1.7 lambs for every ewe exposed to the ram, showing much better prolificacy than Fell had observed in England.
A 1918 American text noted that "It is said that foot rot and liver fluke seldom affect Romney Marsh sheep".
[12] A later book is more circumspect: "Romneys are said to be somewhat resistant to foot rot, liver flukes and other problems that often plague sheep in damp pastures.
The fleece should be of white colour, even texture and a good decided staple from top of head to end of tail and free from kemp.
An English description of size speaks of "big sheep"—ewes, to 85 kg (187 lb), rams to 110 kg (240 lb), while the American breed standard calls for ewes at breeding age to be "140 lbs or more" and rams "200 lbs or more.
"[8] The registering bodies for most sheep breeds continue to struggle with the question of what size is just right and with other finer details.
The time-honored "Bradford system", which uses the eyes and hands of experienced humans, has some correlation to measured AFD, but can be biased.
In 2002–2003, the country exported about 138,000 tonnes of wool "clean basis", about half of which was of AFD >35.4 microns, the Romney domain.
[16]In North America and England, natural-colored Romneys (whose fleeces are not white, but black, gray, silver, variegated) have come to be valued for what they bring to hand-spinners and weavers who like the palette of natural colors.
The sheer number of Romney ewes and lambs in New Zealand make the breed not only the biggest input by tonnage to overseas and domestic wool trade, but also the major part of the country's export frozen lamb trade, as purebreds and first-generation crosses.
