Corriedale - New Zealand

The Corriedale sheep was first developed by James Little, the manager of a ranch called "Corriedale" on the south island of New Zealand by crossing British Lincoln Longwools, which preferred lush lowland grazing, with Merino's that preferred dry sparse grazing, in the early 1880's to breed a sheep that would be more suited to the intermediate grasslands of the ranches location.  Similar breeding work was undertaken by a number of ranch managers across New Zealand and Australia with the addition of Romney and Border Leicester and the breed eventually became stabilised and it was officially recognised in 1911.   

Corriedale have been exported all over the world since then and have become the origins of many other breeds by cross breeding with the local sheep and creating new names breeds or being selectively bred for particular traits and these forming new "strains" of Corriedale, which have their own names, Bond being one such strain.

The Corriedale is a medium-large sheep with rams weighing 85-105kg and ewes weighing 65-75kg.  Both sexes are polled.  They are not prolific with most ewes giving birth to one single lamb.  The chance of twins is 5-25%.  They are a dual-purpose sheep, being raised for both meat and fleece.  Some shepherds who raise this breed use jackets on their sheep to keep the wool as clean as possible.  They are usually white but in smaller flocks, like those mostly kept to sell their fleece to hand spinners, you will often find pale grey through to black and beige through to moorit in the brown range. A small amount of sheep are spotted.

Corriedale fleeces generally range from 4.5-9 kg but most are around 5.4kg.  Staple length is 7.5 - 15cm (3½ - 6 inches).  They come in a wide range of micron counts ranging from the low 20's for lambs and hoggets up to 33 microns for adult but most fall in the middle of this range at about 25-31 microns which is soft enough to be used next-to-skin for most people.  Despite the fact the micron range varies from individual to individual the quality of any particular fleece tends to be consistent in length, crimp and fineness.  The locks are rectangular and dense although soft with flat tips.  The crimp is clearly defined along the full length of the fibre.  

The bright white fleeces take dye well and the coloured fleece can also be overdyed.  You can prepare this fibre anyway you like and you can cut the long fibres in half for carding.  Weathered tips may break off and cause noils.  When spinning ensure to spin finer than you think you need as this fibre will bloom.

Many sheep that are raised in the Falkland Islands and South America are Corriedales.  Wool that is shipped through the Chilean port of Punta Arenas is likely to be Corriedale.  There is currently, in 2025, fibre that is marketed as "Falkland", "South American", "New Zealand" and "Punta Arenas" and yet there are no actual breeds of sheep that are called that and instead, with research, I have discovered that these are actually blends of a variety of sheep from farmers in those areas who have pooled their fleeces together collectively for processing and marketing and generally contain fibre from 4 or 5 different breeds that are available to purchase individually elsewhere.

 

I bought this breed in as 100g of commercially prepared fibre that is stated as being 25-30 microns with a staple of 8-12cm and I bought it in 3 colours, white, grey and brown.  For this project I have chosen to use the brown one.

Unusual for my fibre source, I found that this particular fibre contained quite a lot of kemp, white hairs, bits of vegetable matter and also slubby bits of rubbish fibres.  I removed a lot whilst pre-drafting and some more when I was actually spinning.  I started the spinning on 7th August and plied it on 10th August.  As this breed also bounces up after spinning and washing I did my best to spin as fine as I could but, again, only managed a 14wpi yarn and my finished yarn is 91g/375m, which means that I lost around 9g just in the rubbish bits of the fibre that I removed.

I knit my project piece on 15th and 16th August and used just 15g of yarn.