Short-tail Merinos — a 20 year mission

A NSW Merino producer is capitalising on the non-mulesed wool market by breeding a line of sheep that does not even need to have their tails removed.

A NSW Merino producer is capitalising on the non-mulesed wool market by breeding a line of sheep that does not even need to have their tails removed.

Don and Pam Mudford from Dubbo, NSW, have spent the past two decades working towards their short-tail Merinos.

The sheep still have a tail, but the goal is to have the length shorter than their hocks.

The Mudfords have spent the past 20 years collecting information on tail lengths.

“Tail length is the highest heritable trait in a sheep at about 75 per cent,” Mr Mudford said.

“We started crossing western NSW Merino ewes with some short tailed, polled Finn sires with low density but white wool.

“We kept crossing a wool sheep over the first cross ewe and we have now stabilised it at 3 per cent Finn, keeping the focus on tail length and wool quality.”

The Short-Tail Merinos as a breed have been finetuned over 20 years by central western NSW grower Don Mudford, Dubbo, NSW.

Mr Mudford said when lambs were born, the muscle in the butt of the tail allowed them to lift their tail.

“When they get older and the wool gets longer on that traditional long tail, the muscle becomes weak, so the tail gets wet in winter.

“In a short tail sheep, even half-length or shorter, the lambs maintain using that muscle and keep the tail out of the urine and faeces stream.” ” Mr Mudford said.

He said there was no need to apply blowfly treatment on the short-tail Merino sheep.

And there are plans to go even shorter with tail length now the initial flock breeding has been stabilised.

“We are at the point where we could go back to a pure Finn and halve the tail size again,” Mr Mudford said.

“Our long-term goal at Parkdale is to have more short-tail wool sheep in the flock and keep the quality of those sheep progressing with the tail length remaining shorter than the hocks.”

Currently the Parkdale Merino flock, which also follows Soft Rolling Skins breeding philosophies, is about 1000 breeding ewes which cut an average of 20-micron wool.