Participation in Sheep Ireland’s LambPlus sheep breeding programme continues on an upward trend, with participation levels for 2025 rising by 12% to approximately 1,650 flocks. Participation in the LambPlus programme has been aided greatly in recent years (see Figure 1) by the Sheep Improvement Scheme, with participating farmers required to purchase genotyped rams.
Participation in Sheep Ireland’s LambPlus sheep breeding programme continues on an upward trend, with participation levels for 2025 rising by 12% to approximately 1,650 flocks.
Participation in the LambPlus programme has been aided greatly in recent years (see Figure 1) by the Sheep Improvement Scheme, with participating farmers required to purchase genotyped rams.
Breed profile
The greatest growth in participation has occurred in the Texel breed, with 45 new flocks joining, bringing the total number of Texel flocks to 385 or approximately 23% of total breed figures.
The Charollais is next in line with almost 220 flocks, with the Suffolk breed not far behind at 194 flocks.
The Galway Sheep breed continues to benefit from its inclusion as a rare breed in the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme.
The number of farmers possessing Galway Sheep has more than trebled in recent years, with 145 flocks now recording performance with Sheep Ireland.
Relatively new breeds to the breeding programme, including Dutch Spotted sheep, Blue Texel and Hampshire Down, have all also recorded impressive growth.
County participation
Pedigree sheep breeders in Donegal, Galway and Mayo comprise 14%, 12% and 10% of participating flocks. This is not surprising, given these three counties possess the largest sheep flocks in the country.
The participation rate in all other counties is a single-digit percentage, with the fewest breeders in Dublin, Limerick, Louth and Waterford – the counties with the fewest sheep.
Breeding benefits
Sheep Ireland’s Ignacio Mullin says that the growth in participation is a very positive development for the Irish sheep industry, citing multiple benefits.
“It shows that more and more flock book breeders are seeing the benefit of performance recording their flocks. More flocks performance recording and with genomic evaluation means more rams with Eurostars.
"This has knock-on benefits in terms of more SIS-eligible rams will be available for commercial farmers to select from in 2025.
"Additionally, more performance recording means more data will be flowing into the EuroStar evaluations each week, which will result in more accurate evaluations for everyone.”
Ignacio added: “Genetic evaluations are the core of Sheep Ireland’s objective, as these allow farmers to compare rams from different farms based on their breeding potential and future profitability potential.
"Sheep Ireland runs a weekly single-step across-breed genomic evaluation to help ensure breeding decisions on EBVs are based on the most up-to-date information available at the time.
"The genetic evaluation results are available on each breeder’s personal account and also on the Sheep Ireland ram search, which can be found at www.ramsearch.ie.”
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