Romeldale/CVM

The Romeldale is an American fine-wool breed, and the California Variegated Mutant, or CVM, is its colored offshoot. Both exist only in the United States, and both are endangered.

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.