Since the announcement of the new Sheep Improvement Scheme, Sheep Ireland staff have been working hard to ensure Hill breeding groups and their members have all the necessary knowledge and access to all equipment, facilities, and software necessary to have as many ram SIS eligible for buyers during the sale seasons from September to November.

A new online form was created to allow hill ram breeders to sign up to Sheep Ireland and give tag numbers for their rams. The breeders were then contacted by Sheep Ireland and genotype tags were sent out to them.

Sheep Ireland showed great support for breeding groups by adding a €9.60 subsidy for each hill ram genotyped by group members. Lowering the cost of €24.60 to just €15.

We also subsidized the full €24.60 for stock rams that were born in 2021 and any years previous. This was an early incentive to help group members get all stock rams done to ensure any possible parentage predictions could be captured.

IMPORTANT:

With the full quota for this subsidy now fulfilled, this incentive will now close as of the 11^th of August.

So, there is still a short time for members to get their stock rams genotyped.

But as of August 12^th, the price will increase to €15.

Through the hill groups, it was decided that we would host DNA collection days where group members could turn up to a location with their rams. The members then signed up to Sheep Ireland and their rams had their tags read and genotypes collected on the day. This option has been quite popular.

The following collection days have been carried out to date:

Location	# of days	# of rams
Mayo	4	492
Kerry	3	445
Donegal	3	393
Galway	1	309
Wicklow	1	170
Waterford	1	102

Dates to follow over the next few weeks:

• Donegal Hill ram Groups – 1st August – Stranorlar Mart, Donegal
• Donegal Hill ram Groups – 2nd August – Letterkenny Co. Donegal
• Connemara/Mayo Group – 11^th August – Mamm Cross Mart Co. Galway.

For all the rams that are currently genotyped, the percentage of Hill rams that are not becoming eligible for the Sheep Improvement Scheme has been higher than expected.

The main reason behind this is due to a large percentage of hill rams being sold as shearling/hogget rams. The sires of these rams are not currently on farm. After surveying a large number of farmers whose rams did not sire verify, dead, sold, or culled prior to the scheme announcement were the main reasons for the sires not being genotyped.

To their credit, even with the knowledge of knowing their rams cannot be sold as scheme eligible rams, group members continued to get their rams genotyped regardless of the cost of genotyping. To ensure offspring from these rams would not end up in a similar situation in the years that followed. The phrase ‘we have to start somewhere’ and ‘it won’t catch us again’ have been widely used.

The current number of rams genotyped as of the 18^th of July is as follows:

• 2,869 hill rams across all ages genotyped that have been born since 2015.
• 1,113 are 2022 born Hill rams.

SIS Eligibility

• 1,215 (42%) of 2,869 Hill rams are qualifying for the SIS Scheme.
• 604 (54%) of 1,113, 2022 born Hill rams qualifying.

No Sire verification

• 1466 (51%) of 2,869 are not sire verified. This figure is somewhat expected due to a percentage being older stock rams and the rams not being from the sires they expect.
• 431 (38%) of 1,113, 2022 born hill rams are not sire verified.

Not Correct Scrapie

• 256 (9%) of 2,869 are Scrapie Type 4/5.
• 107 (10%) of 1,113, 2022 born Hill rams Scrapie type 4/5.

In process

• 243 rams are currently in the lab being processed.
• 270 more ram samples were collected this week July 24^th from DNA Collection days. These will be processed by the lab over the next 3-4 weeks.