Central Progeny Test (CPT) Lambing has almost come to a finish for 2021. Data collected from commercial sheep is the foundations for the genetic evaluations. The CPT provides a huge amount of data each year, with 2k ewes and 4k lambs being performance recorded. pic.twitter.com/S7xMRw2ldS

— Sheep Ireland 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 (@SheepIreland) March 23, 2021

Central Progeny Test lambing is coming to a close for 2021. This year the lambing period was once again hugely successful. Over the course of 3 weeks approximately 1550 CPT ewes have lambed down, having approximately 3100 lambs. Sheep Ireland technicians were on hand on each farm over the lambing period across 24 hours a day to collect valuable data that will be used to produce the genetic evaluations that farmers will see in sales catalogues later in the year. By now, all the ewes that conceived to AI have lambed down and it is the turn of th repeat ewes over the next few weeks. Events such as lamb fostering and hand rearing lambs can be very difficult to record accurately, especially when there are up to 15/20 fostering’s taking place on a flock in the peak of lambing. The most effective way we have found to track these events is to use pen boards on each individual lambing pen and to record all the relevant movement data at the point of the ewes and lambs entering the lambing pen. An example of this can be seen below! Take a look at why recording foster and pet lambs is so important! 

As well as data captured at lambing, the ewes and lambs will be weighed and health inspected 3 times throughout the coming year. All of this data will be contributing to the €uro-Star evaluations throughout the year.