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Winner of the Best Poster at the Sheep Breeders Round Table 2019

Sheep Ireland attended the Sheep Breeders Round Table which was held on Friday 15th to Sunday 17th November 2019, near East Midlands Airport, Derbyshire, England. The event was well attended by farmers, breeders, researchers, vets and many industry representatives. Sheep Ireland were there representing the progress in genetic gain that the sheep sector in Ireland has achieved over the last number of years. Eamon Wall presented Ovidata, a project that Teagasc and Sheep Ireland are working together on since 2018. There are 6 commercial flocks involved across the country with all sheep being involved being genotyped and assigned parentage. All performance data recorded feeds back into genetic evaluations with phenotypes such as lambing data, lameness, weight and health data being collected.

The aim of the poster that Eamon wanted to get across was what the project has achieved in the last year since its commencement. There has been over 4,000 DNA samples taken and successfully genotyped with 25,000 health phenotypes collected. Sheep Ireland have a smart phone app that was used to collect all farm data, as a result of year one there are now Economic Breeding Values available for all participating flocks which aids their future breeding decisions.

Other findings from year one suggested huge variation in ram performance across key metrics on all participating flocks. Valuable data such as live weight gain and levels of mortality have been made available. There was variation seen in ram performance in terms of number of ewes impregnated and progeny performance. Rams that were infertile or sub-infertile were easily identified based on parentage results which would have previously potentially gone undetected.

Take a look at the winning poster below.