Clun History - Article 7
Expansion of the North American Gene Pool - Bets Reedy (NACFA Secretary)
While Tony Turner’s 1970 importation of 39 ewes and two rams (purchased from Ray Williams in Shropshire) provided the fundamental genetic base for the Clun Forest breed in North America, a number of later importations, both of live sheep and semen, have significantly broadened that base. Very recently, some rather obscure early importations have come to light that complicate and enrich the history of this breed on this continent.
Tony himself brought in a third ram, Woodhouse A62, in 1973, and in the mid 1970’s, Angus Rouse, a Nova Scotian who was among the first to establish his own flock of Cluns, decided to bring in new blood. At that time, the most common way to proceed was via the importation of live sheep. Live sheep, however, posed considerable risk of bringing in disease problems along with the new genes, and consequently, there was very careful testing before sheep left the U.K., and then more testing and a lengthy quarantine on this side of the Atlantic. This was a tiring and frustrating process. Being a stubborn Scot, however, Angus persevered, and in 1977 he brought to Canada a ram and four ewes - all of which survived the quarantine. While for practical reasons related to the quarantine process, all of those animals came from the same flock in the U.K., they were all sired by rams from different, and well-known, British flocks. Hence, they represented a wider genetic base than than it would seem at first glance.
At roughly the same time, Tom Lloyd-Jones of Chafee, New York was pictured in The Shepherd magazine with a Clun Forest ram imported from the Knockmaroon flock in Ireland. A rather reclusive man, Tom Lloyd-Jones was a founding member of NACFA - who, apparently, came complete with a flock of Cluns! Not a very forthcoming person, Tom was never very clear about where his sheep came from, although the legitimacy, if not the specific details, of the Knockmaroon ram seems beyond question. However, a picture of the ram was printed in The Shepherd magazine, with a date of 1960. A full 15 years later, what looks like, and seems purported to be, the same ram, was again pictured for sale in that magazine. In that ad, the ram is described as “six years old.” All Cluns registered by Tom Lloyd-Jones were sired by the same Knockmaroon ram, KH Z3 or one of his sons.
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Since
these details don’t quite add up, we can’t yet adequately put the pieces
together, and the question of the origin of the “Clun” ewes of Tom Lloyd-Jones
remains open. It is possible, however, that recent research from Mike Eckley of
the Court Llacca flock in the UK suggests an answer. Mike emailed us a photo,
taken in May 1948, of five Clun rams shipped from the Court Llacca flock to a
“Mr. Jones” in Kansas. That’s all we know for sure right now, but it’s
possible that those five rams somehow were connected with the ewes that Tom
Lloyd-Jones bred to the Knockmaroon ram.
In the early 1980’s, Angus Rouse tried to organize another importation from Britain only to be frustrated by new tests and deadlines that couldn’t be met. By 1986, however, he was ready to try again, and he successfully brought in two new rams and two more ewes. These animals were finally released from quarantine in 1993. In writing about one of these rams (Pen-Y-Wern W137), Angus says, "he was a ram I had seen as a yearling at Roger Williams’s farm when I was over in 1984, though at that time I never expected to own him.” Whenever Angus had new stock available, breeders from one end of North America to the other purchased animals, so those bloodlines were very quickly spread throughout the continent.
In the mid 1990's a now defunct company, Elite Genetics of Decorah, Iowa collected and imported semen from European rams of a variety of different breeds, including Cluns, and made that semen available for sale in the US. The Clun semen collected came from two rams, Danyreglws Derek (bred by Valerie Laidlaw of the Saltersford flock) and Willams Beater (bred by A.E. Williams of the Pen-Y-Wern flock). A number of breeders from various parts of the U.S. purchased and used the semen, thereby further enlarging the genetic base available to Clun breeders.
By the late 1990s all imports of live sheep to the US and Canada were banned. The only recourse for North American breeders to expand the genetic diversity of their flocks was to consider importation of frozen semen. For a while, the outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease in the UK and the events of 9/11 led to a temporary delay in importation of all genetic material from Europe.
Once the import ban was lifted, the possibilities of importing new semen led to a conversation among several breeders at the annual meeting of the NACFA in 2003, about joining forces to bring in another collection of semen. We had learned that a group of Dutch shepherds had contacted Frank Gwilliam and Ralph Fulton in the late 1970’s to begin importing Cluns into the Netherlands. With the assistance of Gwilliam and Fulton, they had been able to purchase superb foundation stock from some of the finest English flocks - -like the fabled Babraham flock --which are no longer in existence. The opportunity to obtain those genetics was too good to pass up, so a group of four breeders, Dugald Brown, Pat Eastwood, Bets Reedy, and Michele Stute, worked closely with Gerard Scholtes of the Damburgh flock in the Netherlands to identify and collect semen from the best rams he could find. Meanwhile, Alan Zuschlag, the fifth member of the team, was working with Tom Francis of the Guifron flock in Shropshire, to locate the best rams he could find in the UK.
In each case, the North American breeders carefully spelled out what they were looking for in a donor ram. The breeders also agreed to enroll their flocks in the LambPlan system to monitor the results of their importations on the quality of their respective flocks. We tried to coordinate our searches so that we got the broadest range of new genetics possible, combined with backgrounds most likely to improve our present sheep. Even without bringing in live animals, the delays and frustrations associated with all of the testing and the accompanying paperwork were difficult. All involved with the project were delighted to see lambs from most of these rams on the ground in the spring of 2005. More lambs from those and other rams should be on the ground in 2006.
We now have genes from a large number of the historically most important and most influential Clun flocks in the UK: Pen Y Wern, Parkstock, Guifron, Babraham, Guildon Down, Court Llacca, Woodhouse, Easter Beltie, etc. For the oldsters still among us, that’s a dream come true - access to the finest Clun genes in the world. It’s going to take a number of years before the full genetic impact of the most recent imports will be clear. We look forward to many years of working together to explore and exploit the genetic wealth we now have available.
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