Romeldale/CVM

A.T. Spencer started it in California in the early 1900s. In 1915 he bought the prize-winning New Zealand Romneys shown at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and put those rams over his Rambouillet ewes, wanting better meat and better wool out of the same sheep. He bred the crosses on for several years, selecting for both, and the result took the name Romeldale.

The J.K. Sexton family carried it further through the 1940s and 1950s, selecting for twinning, mothering and out-of-season breeding, and for wool that handled soft, ran ten to fifteen pounds a fleece and measured 21 to 25 microns. Pendleton Mills bought the entire Sexton clip for years.

Colored lambs started appearing in the 1960s. Glen Eidman, a Sexton partner, took an interest and linebred them for several generations while continuing to select on fleece. He called them California Variegated Mutants, and the name stuck. When Eidman's flock of about 75 CVMs was dispersed in 1982, the buyers scattered across the country became the foundation of today's colored population.

A medium to large sheep, 150 to 275 lb, polled in both sexes. The Romeldale is white; the CVM carries the classic badger-face pattern, a dark muzzle and eye markings with body striping, in gray, black, brown and moorit.

The fleece is the point of the breed: soft-handling fine wool, ten to fifteen pounds a head at 21 to 25 microns. A CVM fleece darkens as the sheep matures rather than fading, which fiber buyers prize and which also means the fleece you shear in year five is not the fleece you bought in year one.

Docile, intelligent and alert, and they flock well, which makes them easy to shepherd. The Conservancy rates them suitable for beginners.

The ewes are prolific, excellent mothers with plenty of milk, long-lived, and they hold up in extreme weather. The Sexton-era selection for twinning and out-of-season breeding is still in the population.

Wool first: this is a dual-purpose breed whose fleece was good enough that a major mill bought one family's entire clip for years. The CVM's colored, darkening fleece serves the handspinning market. Meat is the second income, and the twinning rate helps it.

Weather is not the limit. The Livestock Conservancy says they can do well even in extreme weather, and because they flock, they are easy to shepherd.

Shearing, every year. The American Romeldale/CVM Association's standard puts annual growth at 6 to 12 lb a head, less than the ten to fifteen pounds the Sexton flocks were selected for, and describes wool soft enough to wear next to the skin.

Plan for twins. The standard makes twinning and ease of lambing part of the breed's emphasis and asks for ewes with enough milk to raise twins easily.

Threatened on The Livestock Conservancy's Conservation Priority List. The breed has never been numerous, it exists nowhere outside the United States, and the CVM line passed through a single dispersal sale in 1982. Working flocks are the only thing keeping it.

Know which you are buying. The American Romeldale/CVM Association registers both, but a white Romeldale and a badger-faced CVM sell into different markets, and the CVM's fleece will darken over its life.

This breed was built on fleece records, so ask for them: micron, fleece weight, and what the clip has been selling for. Ask too about lambing history; twinning and out-of-season breeding are breed traits a good flock should be able to show you.

Recent sale prices on HoofnHorn, where there are any, are further down this page.