THE FIRST CROSSBREDS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3018, 15 October 1908, Page 3

THE FIRST CROSSBREDS.

The question has been asked by the "Sydney Mail's" Bradford wool correspondent:—Who first of all coupled an English mutton sire with a Merino ewe, and who laid the foundation of the Australian crossbred trade in wool? He says that the great colunial crossbred trade was unborn in the seventies, and not till the •eighties were well passed did the New Zealand crossbred wools begin to appear. The writer recollects reading in an old "Sydney Gazette" that a little over a century ago a number of English mutton sheep were landed in Botany Bay. They consisted of Leicesters, Cotswolds, Lincolns, and other breeds not named. For some time they were kept intact, but with the advent of the Merino some settlers obtained one or more \,fine-woolled rams,- and mated these with coarse-wool led ewes. How far they have persevered with them is not recorded, but there is evidence that several men who went from Sydney to New Zealand when that colony was being populated by white people took a number of coarse-woolled sheep with them. This would be a little over 80 years ago. When the Merino became more plentiful in this j State the cuarser wools were evidently given up. It was the Australian Agricultural Company which brought out the first consignment of British sheep of note, whilst in Victoria there were several flocks ■of British sheep jn the fifties. The. earlist importation into New Zealand direct from England was in 1857, ; when one lot of Romney Marsh and •one lot of Cheviots were landed at Port Chalmers, As there was then a large number of Merino flocks in New Zealand, many were found unsuitable for the rich' country, and the •likelihood is that the Merino ewes were mated with English rams.. So that New Zealand cross-breeding may be said to be about half a century old.