Pahiatua sheep breeder honoured with QSM

A sheep-breeding pioneer in Pahiatua has been given a Queen's Service Medal for more than 40 years service to the industry and the community.
Bill Carthew was one of the first breeders to cross border leicester rams with romney ewes, a combination which led to the coopworth breed and introduced sheep farmers to the concept of genetic performance.
"It's been a lonely journey," Mr Carthew said. "(Genetics) wasn't part of the sheep farming philosophy."
Mr Carthew was Rotary Club district governor for the lower North Island as part of his involvement with the Pahiatua Rotary Club, and served on the committee for Pahiatua Marae.
He also worked for the office of the Race Relations Conciliator, "developing youth programmes to create greater understanding between Maori and pakeha", served on the vestry of St Peter's Anglican Church and helped with the development of a farm for Tararua College.
Mr Carthew, son of bookseller and Pahiatua Mayor William Carthew, said he had "always wanted to be a farmer", and when he had progressed to his own farm became involved in sheep breeding "as a matter of survival".
"Our first year lambing was 84 per cent, and that was looked on as reasonable," Mr Carthew said.
"But I couldn't survive on that."
Mr Carthew said in the old days the value of a ram was based on the number of ribbons it had won or "how many thousand guineas it had made at a sale".
But he came across a group of people crossing border leicester rams with romney ewes, and measuring the results lamb numbers and survival rates, weight and weight gain, and wool weights.
"I had a strong feeling that that was the way I needed to move, and the way sheep farmers in New Zealand needed to move," Mr Carthew said.
The Coopworth Sheep Society formed, requiring random early audits of its breeders and their records.
"It was the only breeding society that has as one of its conditions that you're not allowed to show sheep," Mr Carthew, who served on its committee and as president, said.
The society would have displays at A and P shows, trying to interest sheep farmers in the concepts.
"It was quite interesting in those days.
"Dairy farmers would walk into the caravan and they would understand what we were trying to do," Mr Carthew said.
"Sheep farmers had great difficulty."
The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries became interested in the work of the Coopworth breeders, and developed a performance recording system, the Sheep Plan, that developed into the Animal Plan and the Sheep Improvement, Ltd, which Mr Carthew says is now "the most sophisticated sheep recording system in the world".