The breeding season is fast approaching and all around the country breeders are in the process of selecting suitable rams to serve their ewes. It is difficult enough to find suitable rams that tick all the desirable trait boxes that a breeder may have without the worry of wondering if the desired ram is related to the breeding flock. The inbreeder application on the Sheep Ireland website will allow breeders to control the levels of inbreeding within their flock. The tool itself is very easy to navigate and use. This breeding tool is extremely useful for breeders that are searching for potential sires nationally as any ram on the database can be ran against all the breeding ewes in their flock. At any given time, five rams can be selected and compared. See Image 1 below of the inbreeder checker on the Sheep Ireland website.

Click here to find out more on how to use the inbreeding checker on the Sheep Ireland website.

Image 1; example of inbreeding checker, on the right hand side where boxes are green with ‘low’ stated, this indicates that there is a low chance of the ram being related to the ewe. Yellow boxes stating ‘medium’ indicated a medium chance and the red stating ‘high’ indicates a very high chance of the ram being related to that particular ewe.