Lamb Quality Score (LQS)

• In 2016 a lamb quality score (LQS) was collected on over 2000 central progeny test lambs when they were between 60 -100 days of off age. The LQS is a visual appreciation of the overall quality of the lamb (scored 1 = poor quality to 5 = excellent) by the farmer and takes multiple traits into account including weight, size, confirmation, and length of the animal as well as overall lamb carcass quality. Those lambs were then followed through to slaughter and their age at that point was recorded.
• The graph below presents the average age at slaughter per LQS class. Very few animals were recorded as LQS 1, this is likely to be the reason they out preformed the LQS 2 lambs in this case, but with more records this would be expected to rectify. Even after taking this into account there is still a margin of 107.5 days between the average ages of LQS 1 and LQS 5 lambs by the time they were deemed to be fit for slaughter for the farmer, demonstrating that farmers have the ability to accurately differentiate between their top quality and lowest quality carcass lambs.
• Sheep Ireland will now be investigating the benefits of including such a score in the genetic evaluations and what effect it would have in increasing the accuracy of the evaluations.

Lambing Sheets

Lambing sheets have been sent out this week to the remaining LambPlus breeders who are recording using the paper method, these breeders now account for less 3% of all the LambPlus members. This is testament to all the updates been done on the recording screens over the last two years.

Sheep Ireland January Board Meeting

This meeting took place yesterday (January 19th) and a number of important topics were discussed at length including:

• Carcase data – A detailed summary of all data collected from 2016 born CPT lambs.
• CPT scanning results – Good results, in line with previous years.
• LambPlus Sale – This sale will take place in Tullamore on the 4th Saturday of August as usual.
• LambPlus Update – Breeder sign-up numbers for 2017 was discussed.
• Index improvement plans for 2017/8.
• Breeder/Farmer education in 2017.
  • Workshops and meetings will be held throughout 2017.
  • Case studies based on individual flocks will continue to be used.
  • Our website, Facebook page, and twitter account will continue to be maximised.
  • Increasing attendance at our breeder workshops/meetings will be a major focus.