This made me smile. It just goes to show that context is all.
The Romney is an 'easycare' sheep in New Zealand, where compared to the strike-prone merino sheep it is easy care. On the merinos they actually shear off with modified sheep shears the loose folds of skin and fleece around the back end of the sheep, causing it to scar over, which renders the sheep a little less prone to flystrike. The process is called mulesing and is one of the reasons I rarely buy merino fibre or yarn.
Over here, a breed of sheep called Easycare has been developed, using Wiltshire Horn amongst other breeds in the mix. The breed is supposedly self-shearing and therefore highly resistant to fly strike (but not a lot of use to handspinners, lol), good feet, easy lambing, active lambs - all designed to make a sheep that needs less intervention and therefore less labour-intensive, but producing a good fat lamb.
People also use the term 'easy care' or 'easycare' to mean any sheep that have been bred with these factors in mind. I could call my ewe lambs that include Charollais and Shetland 'easy care' if I wanted - they certainly have the characteristics of easy lambing, good mothering, milkiness and active lambs, and a lot of them have the northern short-tail fluke-shaped short tail that doesn't need docking.
As to Romneys being 'easy care' in a British system - lol, I think not. Nothing with that much wool is going to be 'easy care' in our climate!!! (But jolly nice for handspinners 
)
I'm not a Romney fan, and I'm no expert on them (although I have sat through a lengthy presentation on their genetics by the guy that runs Wairere UK), but they are supposedly easycare even with all that wool - they have done a lot of work on worm resistance etc and cull for animals that get cast (apparently it is to do with body shape), but I suppose they will have to have fly treatment, but the idea is that all that wool means that the woolcrop actually pays....
I don't like them because a) I think they are too big b)150% is too modest a target at lambing c) wool! I hate flystrike and I cannot shear, so I'd have to pay a shearer and I'd really rather not - I have other things to do with my time, but I would be the first to say that they do their job very well.
Not sure how long Merinos lasted in NZ though - I don't imagine they suited the climate, just as they dont here - mulesing is an Aussie thing as far as I am aware.
As for "easycares" the breed - there are a lot of types about - there is an official breed, developed by Iolo Willams on Anglesey using Welsh Mountains and Wilts, but I don't think the breed soc is very stringent about anything other than they have to be a polled, shedding sheep to be sold as one (I might be wrong).
Mine are mostly sourced from the "Exlana" group of breeders (of which TimW is one), who started with Lleyns, Poll Dorsets, Wilts and Easycares, but have used all kinds of things along the way, including Frieslands and Khatadins...
What makes them 'easycare' is that they are bred to lamb outside, with no assistance, shed their wool and so in most cases should not need fly treatment (although I do treat on watermeadows and so on, but I use a fraction of the product a 'normal' sheep would have), dont get cast (no heavy fleece helps), are culled for feet ( i have trimmed about 2 feet in the past 2 years) and are now being selected for natural worm resistance to cut down on chemical use (as are a lot of breeds, including some terminals). They can be bred to suit most systems (see 'chevease' for a man lambing 3000 of them outside on some of Scotlands hardest hills). Like all maternal breeds, they seem not to achieve the better grades when bred pure. Since I am trying to make a go of this commercially, I realise it will be a while before anybody wants to buy breeding ewes from me, as reputations are not built overnight, so I chose to put them to the right terminal sire to produce fat lambs.
I lamb in April, have most away fat by christmas - the terminal cross woolshedders make similar money to mule x terminals but have only cost me £15-20 to produce. I kept a few stragglers (triplets etc) over winter this year because I had some extra grass and topped a very busy Salisbury market last week with some standardweight woolshedder x SufTex, netting me £79/head (av weight 34kg)....
I will admit, easycares are 'marmite', but I really cannot understand what is not to like about sheep that give you less heartache and a very healthy margin....
