The volume of data being collected on Irish sheep breeds continues to grow steadily. One might ask why, as an industry, we should prioritise performance data-recording for sheep, but the answer is simple. Without measuring how our sheep breeds perform, delivering significant genetic gain is all but impossible.

The objective of Sheep Ireland as an organisation is a simple one – to help increase the profitability of Irish sheep farmers by identifying the most profitable genetics. Sheep Ireland collects performance data from over 600 pedigree flocks and over 25 commercial flocks. The data collected from these flocks is then analysed and displayed as €uroStar evaluations for use by all Irish sheep farmers.

There are many different elements involved in delivering reliable and useful genetic evaluations for Irish farmers but performance data is a critical element. More data translates into a higher genetic evaluation accuracy percentage. The message to all farmers using the €uroStar evaluations remains the same – accuracy percentage is hugely important.

Currently, performance data from over 5,000 commercial ewes is contributing to the genetic evaluations that farmers will see at ram sales this year. Through the OVIGEN research project, we also hope to explore the potential role that genomics might play in future sheep breeding.

Benefits being measured

When looking at the commercial data collected by Sheep Ireland throughout the years, on average five-star animals are outperforming lower starred animals, which is why we continue to encourage Irish farmers to use high-starred rams. We are also seeing less labour required at lambing and more lambs being born from mothers sired by five-star rams.

Positive differences in lamb weight gains show that lambs sired by five-star rams are on average heavier than lambs sired by lower-starred rams at six weeks of age and at weaning. Commercial five-star ewes, on average, had slightly lighter mature weight (68kg) relative to one-star ewes (71kg).

At similar levels of production, this will result in the ability to increase the number of ewes in a given flock without increasing feed demands. The key benefit is the longer-term gain – genetic improvement is permanent and cumulative, so breeding decisions that you make today will affect future generations of animals in your flock. For example, if you were to use animals with good genes, then the effects of these good genes will remain in the flock into the future. Unfortunately the same applies to bad genes, making the €uroStars an invaluable selection tool when choosing a ram.

Programme changes

There are three distinct elements to the Sheep Ireland programme – LambPlus (the source of pedigree ram breeders data), CPT (central progeny test – source of commercial data) and MALP (maternal lamb producers – source of commercial data). The CPT uses AI to inseminate over 2,500 ewes with the semen from pedigree rams from our LambPlus pedigree breeders.

The reason for AI use is to allow Sheep Ireland to identify the sire of each lamb born on the farm with maximum accuracy, allowing various bloodlines to be compared with each other.

MALP is a programme which has identified the parentage of lambs using single sire mating (SSM), ie using one ram with a group of ewes. This requires a high level of management to minimise and reduce the effects of ram infertility/subfertility.

MALP has been in operation for six years and will not continue in its current form from this year on. While MALP’s original objective was to demonstrate the benefits of using €uroStar rams, the programme delivered many additional benefits. The most important of these was to demonstrate and trial a system of commercial performance data recording. Using handheld data recorders and EID tagging lambs at birth, over 25,000 lambs have been recorded through the MALP programme.

The reason that Sheep Ireland now needs to change the approach used in MALP is due to the makeup of sheep breeds involved in Sheep Ireland (see breakdown of current recording breeds in Figure 1).

The farmers involved in MALP since the outset have been extremely progressive. They have always been willing to trial new techniques which has been invaluable to Sheep Ireland in trying to design a commercial performance recording system that can be employed by any Irish sheep farmer with an interest in collecting data on their flock. The future intention of Sheep Ireland will be to promote performance recording to commercial farmers interested in this area with a focus on generating data on the sheep breeds actively involved in the LambPlus programme.

Tullamore mart will once again be the venue for the Sheep Ireland multi-breed ram sale. The sale will take place on Saturday 22 August. For farmers, this sale offers a great opportunity to source high €uroStar rams from the best pedigree flocks around Ireland and from a number of different breeds. There are a number of criteria that a ram must meet to enter this sale, helping to ensure that the best sheep genetics available to the industry are present on the day. A full sale catalogue will be available on the Sheep Ireland website www.sheep.ie in advance of the sale. Sheep Ireland can be contacted on 1850 601 901 or by email at query@sheep.ie.