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Weekly Update: 11/03/16

CPT Lambing

The CPT lambing is one of the most important times of the year in the Sheep Ireland calendar and each year we try to improve the quality and quantity of data from the year before. This year we have added some new traits and continue to investigate other traits. This year on top of the normal parentage recording, lambing difficulty and date of birth we are also recording three 1-5 scores for ewe Milkability and Motherability as well as Lamb Vigour. It is hoped that these traits will let us find out more about the bloodlines that are used in the CPT. Once lambing is over our geneticist will then investigate the scores that have been collected and determine if these scores could potentially add value to the genetic evaluations. We could open these traits up to LambPlus breeders for recording in 2017 if deemed valuable.

Ewe Milkability is scored from one (very poor milk) to five (lots of milk) based mostly on the size of the udder, ewe Motherability is scored from one (Very poor mother, rejecting her lamb) to five (Excellent mother which follows her lambs closely the lambs are being moved and licks her lambs), and finally Lamb Vigour, this is also scored from one (lamb still not standing after 1 hour) to five (Lamb standing under 5 min).

Two healthy and happy suffolk lambs tagged and recorded and ready to be sent out to the field at Andrew Moloneys
Two healthy and happy suffolk lambs tagged and recorded and ready to be sent out to the field at Andrew Moloneys
Lambing assistance is currently running at 15% (Lambing difficulty scores 3 & 4) with the average birth weight recorded as 4.6kg.
Lambing assistance is currently running at 15% (Lambing difficulty scores 3 & 4) with the average birth weight recorded as 4.6kg.

Ovigen

The first list of DNA tags ID’s for the Ovigen Pilot project flocks have been compiled and ordered and will be arriving with the breeders over the coming weeks.