Sheep Ireland Elite €uroStar Multi-Breed Ram sale will take place on Saturday, August 24th 2024 in Tullamore Mart, Co. Offaly.
The success of the sale has been primarily driven by the increased level of entry criteria, to ensure that farmers are presented with the highest standard of rams.
This year, again the entry criteria will require breeders to genotype some ewes in their flock. This means that breeders must start making their initial selections by late May to allow sufficient time for animals to be genotyped and any errors corrected.
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Sheep Ireland 2024 Elite Ram sale – Dates to remember |
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| Recommended date to order DNA sampling kits via your SI account | End of May |
| Recommended date to send DNA to the lab | Beginning of June |
| Last date for sending DNA samples to the lab | June 30th |
| Deadline for sale entries | August 5th (Monday) |
| Provisional sales catalogue published | August 9th (Friday) |
| Sale substitutes deadline | August 15th (Thursday, 1 pm) |
| Final sale catalogue generated | August 16th (Friday) |
| Sheep Ireland Sale | August 24th |
Entry Criteria
This year’s requirements includes:
- €uroStar Index – All rams must be 5 Stars for either the Replacement or Terminal index at the time of catalogue printing. These can be checked using your Sheep Ireland online €uroStar report for the most up-to-date genetic evaluation results.
- Genotyped with Genomic Evaluation – All rams entered in the sale must be genotyped via the Sheep Ireland genomic service.
- Fully Parentage Verified – All rams must be fully parentage (Sire and Dam) verified. That means, that the mother and father of every ram entered must also be genotyped with Sheep Ireland. If a sire or dam mismatches and is removed, the animal must have a new sire or dam assigned via genomic parentage predictions to be eligible for the sale.
- Data Quality Index (DQI) – Breeders wishing to enter sheep in the sale must have a flock DQI of 85% or higher at the time of catalogue printing. You can get your most up to date DQI score on your online account at sheep.ie, and update it manually by clicking “Recalculate”.
- Scrapie Type – All rams entered in the sale must be Scrapie Type 1, 2, or 3. This information is available in your genomic results screen.
- Flock Linkage Status – Flocks that wish to enter the sale must be genetically linked in 2024. You can check your flock linkage status by visiting your €uroStar profile through your online account. Flock linkage is now updated after all the 2024 lambing data has been submitted to the database.
- Ram Inspection – All rams must be physically correct, like any breed society sale. Sheep Ireland will carry out a thorough ram inspection on the day and inspect all rams upon entry to the sale. Any sheep which, in the inspector’s opinion, are not physically correct will be rejected immediately.
Genotyping precautions
Due to the possibility of a ram having a sire or dam changed and/or having a change in €uroStar values following genotyping, we would advise each breeder to genotype an additional ram(s) as substitutes well in advance of the sale. It will take up to 1 month from the ram’s tissue sample arriving in the lab to the ram having a genomic evaluation, so this process cannot be completed at short notice. We would advise that potential rams for the sale are DNA sampled and returned to the lab no later than June 1st, this will allow sufficient time for rams to be re-sampled in the event of the sample failing the quality control checks at the lab or to rectify any parentage errors found.
Number of Rams eligible to be entered
The size of the flock is determined by the number of pedigree ewes that lambed down to a ram of the same breed. If a breeder has more than one breed, they are eligible to enter rams from each breed.
It is worth noting, that these numbers may be subject to change, depending on the volume of entries.
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No. of Pedigree ewes lambed per breed |
No. of Rams |
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1-39 Ewes |
4 |
| 40+ Ewes |
5 |
How to enter the sale will be communicated a few weeks before the deadline.