Irish Grassland Association Conference and Farm Walk

The farm walk will take place on John Larges Farm in Gortnahoe Co. Tipperary on Tuesday May 22nd. John is one of four farmers currently involved in the CPT Programme, this will prove be a very informative event and Sheep Ireland will be in attendance, please see the agenda here and how you can book your place.

Sheep Ireland Board Meeting

Took place on Thursday 3^rd May and some of the main topics covered were:

• Finalising the criteria for the LambPlus Sale 2018
• Genetic Linkage and how we would display unlinked flocks going forward.
• RamPlus 2018 (in conjunction with breed societies)
• Hosting of the Charollais Flockbook on the Sheep Ireland Database.
• Update on Genotyping progress to date.

If for any reason you wish to discuss these topics further or any other topics please contact the Sheep Ireland office or your relevant board representative – see full list of current Sheep Ireland board members on our website here.

LambPlus Update

This week we circulated letters to all LambPlus Breeders which included a lot of important information.

1. Muscle & Fat Scanning – has kicked off for the 2018 season this week, please don’t forget to text the word ‘scanning’ to 0894577665 before Monday if you wish to scan this year. For a scanning checklist and further information on the benefits of scanning please see here.
2. LambPlus Sale – we have finalised the sale criteria for this year. A reminder of the full criteria will be included on the sale invite sent to all breeders later this summer.
3. Genetic Linkage – the linkage status of flocks has been communicated in this letter, this status will soon be visible to breeders when they log in to their Sheep Ireland account. This year we have taken the decision to clearly highlight where €uroStar evaluations originate from an unlinked flock. This will be highlighted in sales catalogues and all other locations where €uroStar evaluations appear. This decision has been made for the benefit of all Irish sheep farmers, to ensure that the best possible information is being provided to users of the €uroStar evaluations. For more info on genetic linkage please follow this link.