Sheep Ireland is now 10 years in existence, and since 2009 breeders and Sheep Ireland have put in a substantial effort to record large volumes of data to increase the accuracies of the €uroStar evaluations. In order to see how far we have come as an industry we must reflect upon where we have come from.

The Belclare was one of the first breed societies to have their Flockbook hosted on the Sheep Ireland database and as a result, one of the first societies to have €uroStar evaluations available for their rams in the Premier sale catalogue.

The average Accuracy (Acc) of Belclare animals in the 2010 Premier sale on the old “Overall Sheep Value” index was only 15%. This year at their 2018 Premier Sale the average Acc% of the Replacement index was 43%. This gives an average increase of 3.5% per year or a 28% increase in total.

One ram lamb (JR1810867; see details below) at this years premier sale even managed to achieve an Acc of 50%, this is a results of having a very well recorded sire, and both grand sires were also progeny tested in the CPT. He was also coming from a flock that is also very well genetically linked and performance recorded, as can be seen in the breeders impressive DQI.