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Weekly update: 09/01/2015

Weekly update: 09/01/2015

Happy new year to all readers of this weekly update. We look forward to the next performance recording season with a lot of optimism and hope that we can continue to develop the €uroStar evaluations in association with our LambPlus breeders for the benefit of all sheep farmers.

 

Plans for 2015

At the minute we are busy planning for ‘Ovigen’, the new research project being undertaken in association with Teagasc and UCD to genotype a large number of Ireland’s pedigree breeding sheep. In order to genotype these sheep, we will need to collect a sample of DNA from these sheep and this will need to be done this spring. The practicalities of this DNA collection will be very challenging as each flock will need to be visited individually. We have no doubt that the breeders involved will be as helpful as usual in accommodating us to do this successfully.

 

Lambing season: 2015

Many breeders are now in the middle of, or almost finished lambing their early batch of pedigree ewes. This time of the year is the most critical when it comes to data recording. LambPlus breeders certainly do have a far greater labour burden at lambing time when compared to your average sheep farmer. Not only do LambPlus breeders need to take care of the normal duties at lambing time, but they must also invest a lot of time and energy into capturing the required data for Sheep Ireland – recording parentage details, DOB, birth weights, lambing difficulties, fostering info, pet lambs and lamb deaths. This is no easy task and hopefully commercial sheep farmers will continue to recognise the benefits of buying rams from these breeders which will help to justify their efforts.

 

New Sheep Ireland web screens

LambPlus breeders are now beginning to enter lambing information onto our database through our new web screens. The feedback so far has been very positive and hopefully this positivity will grow as we add new features to the system over the coming months.

 

Step back in time

The image below shows some of the earliest Texel sheep in Ireland. The picture was taken in 1978 by the Department of Agriculture in Teagasc, Mellows College, Athenry, Co. Galway.Ewe and Lambs_1978_Mellows College