CORRIEDALES IN AUSTRALIA 
Part of a newly founded flock in New South Wales. 
One of the most valuable characteristics 
of the Merino breed is its ‘‘herding instinct’? which prompts the animals to keep together, 
and makes them manageable by shepherds. 
This instinct has been retained, it is said, in 
the Corriedale, and is a feature of great value to the new breed. (Fig. 13.) 
upon no highly improved mutton sheep 
in the last half of the eighteenth century. 
In ancestry and in many commercial 
characteristics the Merino is about as 
dissimilar to the long wools as can be 
found without going to the central 
Asiatic types. 
CONSTANT CULLING 
The main work of the New Zealand 
Corriedale breeders seems to have been 
in the culling of rams and ewes. As 
shown in Mr. Little’s flock, twenty ram 
lambs were retained from the offspring 
of 4,000 ewes. At the Moeraki estate 
150 ewes were selected from the progeny 
of 1,000 ewes. Such vigorous culling 
surely allowed uniformity. We have 
no records as to the percentage of dis- 
cards from the second and subsequent 
generations, but 1911 reports indicate 
that culling is not light as the number of 
yearling ewes is not far below half that 
of the older ones. From my observa- 
tions on New Zealand farms I did not 
O4 
conclude that Corriedale breeders now 
cull heavier than owners of flocks of 
other breeds. The vigorous culling in 
the earlier stages need not be taken to 
show particular clearness of aim on the 
part of the breeders, as it is doubtful if 
they then looked forward to the status of 
a breed. Sheep were cheap and the best 
of the half-breds were retained in a sep- 
arate flock as the most logical method 
of obviating the need of pure long wool 
and Merino flocks to produce fresh stock 
ewes. The discards were sold or used 
with rams of the common breeds. 
The fact that many of the opposed 
characters of the Lincoln and Merino 
appear to have blended and that the 
blended form is now uniformly trans- 
mitted does not harmonize with present 
day understanding of the probability of 
segregation of the factors composing a 
character. With coat characters such 
as length and fineness of fiber so opposite 
as they are in the Lincoln and Merino, 
one might expect here at least frequent 
