Romney

The Romney is a dual-purpose sheep: it carries a heavy longwool fleece and finishes to a solid meat carcass off the same animal. It's a big breed with a settled, easy-going temperament, and it's one of the most widely exported sheep breeds anywhere. Stock descended from the original English Romneys now run across New Zealand, Australia, North America and South America.

The breed built its reputation on ground that beats most other sheep. It came from the low, damp marshland of southeast England, and the animals carry a natural resistance to footrot and to the internal parasites that build up on wet grazing. That toughness is the main reason the breed ended up spread across half the world, New Zealand included.

Romneys are steady, unhurried grazers. They do well in open paddock systems, hold condition on modest feed, and are generally easy for one person to run because they stay settled under handling, at the yards or in the shed.

Who it suits

The Romney suits farmers running sheep on heavy, damp or swampy ground, hill country included, where other breeds struggle with foot and parasite problems. It also suits hand-spinners and fibre producers after a long, lustrous wool, and lifestyle block owners who want one breed that pays its way in both fleece and meat. Its placid nature makes it a sound pick for people new to keeping sheep.

The breed's name comes from Romney Marsh, a stretch of low, wet coastal grazing land in Kent, in the southeast corner of England. Sheep had grazed that ground for centuries, and the marsh itself did the breeding: only animals that could shrug off footrot and parasites in standing-wet conditions lived long enough to pass on their genes. The breed was once known as the Romney Marsh sheep, and before that simply as the Kent.

Through the 1800s, breeders worked on the local marsh sheep, crossing in Leicester longwool blood among other lines, to fix a heavier, more even fleece and a better carcass. That work produced the dual-purpose Romney farmers know today. A breed society was set up in England late in the century to record pedigrees and settle a standard.

From the 1850s, Romneys were shipped out to the colonies in large numbers, and New Zealand took to the breed like no other. For most of the 20th century the Romney was New Zealand's dominant sheep breed, run on hill country and flats from Northland to Southland, and it became the foundation stock for a good deal of later New Zealand sheep breeding. The breed also took hold in Australia, the United States, Canada and parts of South America.

The Romney is still a major commercial breed in New Zealand today, and it's farmed worldwide for wool, meat, and as a hardy base for crossbreeding programmes. Back in England, it's still tied closely to the marsh country where it began.

The Romney is a large, deep-bodied sheep with a level back and a broad, well-muscled frame. Both rams and ewes are usually polled, so they carry no horns. The face is open and clear of wool, the head is broad, and the legs are clean below the knee and hock. Overall it's a solid, low-set animal built to carry a heavy fleece and hold condition on rough country.

The fleece is what marks the breed out. It's a true longwool: long-stapled, with a clear wave or curl and good lustre. The wool grows steadily and sits dense enough to shed rain, which suits the wet ground the breed was bred to handle.

Coat and colours

The standard Romney carries a white fleece with a clean white face and legs. Staple length usually runs from about 12 to 20 cm over a year's growth, with a fibre diameter in the medium-to-strong longwool range, which is why the wool suits hand-spinners and hardwearing yarns and textiles. Separate coloured Romney lines have been bred up by farmers who keep natural black, grey and brown fleeces for the fibre trade.

The Romney has a settled, even temperament. The breed is calm and good-natured, and the sheep generally stay quiet through routine jobs such as shearing, drenching and foot trimming. They're not flighty or quick to bolt, which keeps stress down for both the animal and whoever is running them through the yards.

Within a flock the breed is sociable and moves as one, the way sheep do. Romneys aren't aggressive toward people, and even rams are usually manageable, though any breeding ram is worth treating with the usual caution. The sheep are alert and will forage well across a paddock, but they spend most of their time grazing rather than testing fences or looking for a way out.

Mothering is a real strength of the breed. Ewes are attentive to their lambs and generally lamb without much intervention, which suits flocks run at scale on open country.

Grooming

• Shear once a year, usually in spring, since the heavy longwool fleece won't shed on its own.
• Check and trim feet on a regular schedule; the breed resists footrot but isn't immune to it.
• Crutch (dag off wool around the rear) before lambing and in the warmer months to keep the area clean and cut flystrike risk.
• Watch for flystrike in warm, damp weather and treat or shear affected animals straight away.

Exercise

• Provide open paddock space for daily grazing and movement; the breed is built for covering ground.
• Rotate paddocks where possible to keep pasture in good heart and break parasite cycles.
• No set exercise routine is needed beyond enough paddock space.

Environment

The Romney is one of the few sheep breeds that does well on wet, heavy or swampy ground, hill country and river flats included. It still needs a dry spot to camp, clean water, shelter from the worst weather, and secure fencing. Stocking rates should match what the paddock can carry. The breed handles cold and damp better than it handles prolonged heat, so shade and shearing timing matter more on hot, dry properties.

The Romney is first and foremost a grazing animal and gets most of its feed from good pasture. It's an efficient breed that holds condition on modest feed, which is part of why it works in low-input systems. The trick is matching feed to the stage of production: maintenance for dry ewes, rising feed through late pregnancy, and the heaviest demand during lactation, when a ewe is feeding lambs at foot.

When pasture runs short, over winter or in a dry spell, supplement with good hay or silage, and bring in grain or concentrates only when energy demand is genuinely high. Clean water needs to be on tap at all times, and a sheep-specific mineral supply supports health on most New Zealand pastures.

Treats and supplements

Offer a free-choice sheep mineral or lick suited to the local soil, since deficiencies such as selenium or cobalt turn up in a fair few New Zealand regions. Keep grain to what the production stage actually needs, because too much causes digestive upsets and can leave breeding stock overweight.

The Romney counts as one of the hardier sheep breeds, with natural resistance to footrot and to the internal parasites that build up on wet pasture. That resistance is what the breed was selected for, generation after generation, back on the marsh. With good management a Romney can live around 10 to 12 years, though breeding ewes in commercial flocks are often culled earlier as production drops off.

That resistance is relative, not absolute. The breed still needs the standard sheep health programme, and the heavy fleece makes parasite, flystrike and foot checks something to keep up with rather than skip.

Preventive care

• Follow a vaccination programme suited to the region (commonly clostridial diseases).
• Run faecal egg-count checks and drench on the results, not on a fixed calendar.
• Trim and check feet at regular yardings.
• Crutch before lambing and through fly season to cut strike risk.
• Provide region-appropriate minerals to head off deficiency disorders.

Romneys reach breeding age inside their first year, and ewes are usually first mated to lamb at one to two years old, depending on growth and how the flock is run. Like most sheep breeds in temperate regions, Romneys are seasonal breeders: they come into heat as the days shorten through autumn, and lambs arrive in spring.

Gestation runs about five months, roughly 145 to 150 days. Ewes commonly have a single lamb or twins, and triplets turn up but are less common. The breed has a name for easy lambing and strong mothering, with ewes that are attentive and milk well, which keeps hand-rearing to a minimum. Lambs are vigorous and grow away steadily on pasture.

The breed is also widely used as a maternal base in crossbreeding, where Romney ewes go to terminal sires to produce market lambs while keeping the dam line's hardiness and milk.