Nudies: Roadshow promotes sheep that grow hair instead of wool

New Zealand Nudies lambs shed fluff at Wairarapa hill country sheep and beef farm Wairere at weaning in November last year.

A crew from a Wairarapa hill country sheep and beef farm were in Canterbury last month, as part of a national run to showcase their ram breeds including Nudies. Wairere principal Derek Daniell spoke to Otago Daily Times’ Shawn McAvinue about the motivation behind breeding a sheep that grows hair rather than wool.

A monument of giant golden hand shears welcomes visitors to Masterton with the greeting “Home of the Golden Shears”, a nod to the world’s premier shearing and woolhandling championship.

Ironically, the largest town in the Wairarapa was also home to the inaugural auction of purebred Nudies ram lambs in March this year, a sheep breed that grows hair rather than wool.

Wairarapa hill country sheep and beef farm Wairere visited hair sheep breeders in the United Kingdom and Ireland in 2019, searching for hair sheep genetics from large flocks, that run outdoors year-round with minimal shepherding.

From those visits, ewes were selected for embryo transfer and rams for artificial insemination to create the hair sheep breed New Zealand Nudies.

At the auction, 77 purebred Nudies and 53 first cross Nudies ram lambs sold for an average of $4600, mostly to commercial farmers.

A team from Wairere embarked on a national roadshow stopping at about 15 rural locations last month, including Culverden, Oxford and Pleasant Point.

Wairere principal Derek Daniell said strong wool underpinned the New Zealand economy for a century from 1870 but now it cost farmers to grow the fibre.

“They’ve been seeing that on their profit and loss statements for the last six or seven years now.”

The costs for farmers to produce wool included the four “dreaded Ds”.

“Dagging, dipping, docking and drenching ... if you can get away from those, farming is pretty easy.”

The Nudies lambs shed some fluff at weaning and then remained covered in hair.

Hair sheep allowed for a reduction in duties and inputs, which could simplify farming and make time for other pursuits.

“You can run another business or have another job when all you have to do is shift your animals every couple of days and make sure they’re well fed.

“You don’t have to do a lot of other work.”

The genetics in the first cross include Romney and Texel, marketed as Streakers, which captured the advantages of Nudies, exploited hybrid vigour and maintained an annual fleece, which could be bred back to a strong wool breed if the fibre made a comeback in value.

He believed farmers would need to be paid $15/kg to make them enthusiastic about wool again.

Nudies had been bred in the UK for more than 50 years, using genetics from the Welsh Mountain sheep and Wiltshire, and selected for their lack of wool.

The meat yield of the Nudies on the hook was unknown at this stage.

“We aren’t killing them because they are too valuable.”

Daniell’s grandfather started a registered Romney stud in 1929.

“We have been the biggest seller of flock rams since about 1987.”

Wairere sold about 2600 rams annually and about half of those went to farms in the South Island.

About 85 per cent of those rams were Romney.

“Romney has always been the base.”

Although he now touted hair sheep, he had not given up on a comeback for strong wool and wore clothing featuring the fibre including underwear, singlets and jerseys.

“We are keeping a foot in either camp ... we are feeling our way and it’s always hard to predict the future.”