Sheep Ireland and Teagasc Pedigree Breeder Workshops

• This coming July, Sheep Ireland in association with Teagasc are planning to hold a number of on-farm evening workshops (starting at 7.00pm) for Irish ram breeders. The objective of these workshops will be to explain the workings of the Sheep Ireland genetic evaluations to current and potential LambPlus breeders, go though some of the reports and other functionality available on the website that can assist breeders in making important breeding decisions. We aim to have lots of open discussion on the day and to make it a worthwhile event for all attendees.
• Ram breeders are the people that engage most with commercial sheep farmers, so by further increasing the knowledge of LambPlus breeders about the €uro-Stars, will help ram breeders to pass the message on to commercial farmers as well as helping to increase their own understanding on the stars.

Sheep Ireland Industry Meeting

• This meeting will take place at 4:30pm in the Killeshin Hotel, Portlaoise on 7 th July. The initial results of the OVIGEN project (Genomics trial) will be presented by Dr. Donagh Berry and Dr. Noirin McHugh from Teagasc. They will be covering a range of topics from this project including Major gene results, Parentage errors, the Pilot project, the INZAC flock (New Zealand vs. Irish genetics), Health data collected during the OVIGEN flock visits and the future of genotyping sheep in Ireland.
• The meeting will be used as an opportunity to educate the industry about the benefits genomic technology has to offer and how we can position the Irish sheep industry to reap these benefits. As spaces will be limited, we will require anyone interested in attending to make contact with Sheep Ireland directly to reserve a place – please call 1850 601 901 or email [email protected].

CPT Weaning Weights

All the CPT weaning weights have now been collected and will be included in next week’s evaluation. All the lamb weights get adjusted to 100 days of age so that they are all compared fairly within each flock. The average 100 day weight across all the CPT flocks is 31.5kg.