CORRIEDALE SHEEP 
Breed Now Being Tested in United States Is Result of Cross-Breeding in New 
Zealand 30 Years Ago--Breeds Remarkably True with Very Little 
Tendency to Reversion—Ancestral Characters Seem 
to Have Blended—How the Breed 
Originated. 
F. R. MARSHALL 
Senior Animal Husbandman in Sheep and Goat Investigations, Bureau of Animal 
Industry, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. 
HE importation of seventy-five 
| Corriedale sheep from New Zea- 
land by the United States Bureau 
of Animal Industry a year ago has 
attracted considerable attention and 
well-meant criticism. Six head of 
Corriedales had reached this country 
a few months earlier than the Gov- 
ernment’s importation. The bringing 
of a trial importation of Corriedales 
at Government expense had been urged 
on account of the need of testing the 
breed’s adaptability to Western State 
conditions before the making of private 
investments in stock of the breed. AI- 
though the ewes of this trial importation 
have done well during their six months 
stay on a Wyoming range, there has 
as yet been no opportunity to know the 
effects upon them of our rigid winter 
nor to see a twelve months’ growth of 
wool under the conditions for which it 
was desired they should be tested. 
Nevertheless, during the past year three 
parties have imported other Corriedales 
to establish breeding flocks. 
The demands of recent seasons for 
both wool and meat have greatly 
increased the popularity of the cross- 
bred range ewe. Rams of the long 
wooled breeds are preferred for crossing 
upon Merino ewes to produce the 
cross-bred stock ewe, on account of 
length and weight of fleece and the 
greater mature size over that of the 
cross-bred offspring sired by _ repre- 
sentatives of the down breeds. 
It is surprising to find to what extent 
the cross-bred ewe is sought in territory 
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commonly supposed to be the permanent 
and exclusive domain of the hardy and 
long tried Merino. This cross-bred ewe 
produces the class of wool that has been 
in demand in recent years; she has a 
greater marketable weight than the 
Merino ewe and her mutton qualities 
derived from her Lincoln or Cotswold 
sire add greatly to the carcass value of 
her offspring. The drawback of this 
ewe lies in the difficulty of perpetuating 
her type. A second or third cross of 
long wool blood obliterates the necessary 
herding instinct peculiar to the Merino 
alone. Crossing of Merino rams soon 
loses the size of carcass and the length 
and type of wool imparted by the long 
wool. In neither case can there be 
continued progress in bringing the 
flock nearer to the type approximately 
realized in the first cross. 
VARIATION AND REVERSION 
While the cross-bred ewe has been 
deemed a necessity, her brother, the 
cross-bred ram, has in the main been 
regarded as impossible for breeding 
purposes. The lack of uniformity in 
the offspring of cross-bred parents is 
well-known. The teachings of the new 
school of geneticists that has arisen 
since 1900 have reached the range 
sheepman, and while not understood 
have been regarded to a_ surprising 
degree. The proneness of the practical 
man to out-theorize the professional 
theorist is shown in his frequent adher- 
ence to the idea that the offspring of 
cross-bred parents always revert to 
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