Traditional sheep farming faces significant challenges to adjust to new environmental and land use regulations, declining stock numbers, cost of wool production, parasites, and disease stressors.

We are focused on breeding highly productive hair sheep that are more adaptive to these conditions. Hair sheep are renowned for their hardiness and resistance to parasites and do not have the annual cost of wool production. Still with an emphasis on meat production, their rugged hair coat is suited to better withstand the environment in which they live.

Some of the newer breeds of hair sheep are crosses between ‘pure’ hair sheep breeds and meat-type wooled breeds. They grow more wool than traditional hair sheep but shed their coats annually and do not require shearing. They may be more accurately identified as ‘shedding’ sheep.

The pelts from hair sheep also produce the highest quality ovine leather. The closer a sheepskin approaches hair sheep, the tighter and firmer the fibre network and therefore the better the skin for producing leather. This is because of the numerous fine wool fibres, as opposed to the lesser number of coarse fibres of the hair sheep, which causes the skin to be more open and loose in texture.

Hair sheep breeds are gaining in popularity globally due to the low annual maintenance required, however currently knowledge of wool-less/hair sheep is limited in New Zealand.

That means further research is required to establish their suitability to NZ farming conditions, which is why we are doing our part to drive innovation in sheep breeding.