Central Progeny Test 2017

Lambing is about to begin across our CPT flocks. The first lambs are due to arrive on Sunday which will mark 141 days after AI. Peak lambing will occur on day 145 for each flock. During AI, up to 300 ewes are inseminated daily. A number of CPT flocks have two AI days so there will be a very busy lambing period ahead. 24 hour supervision is provided by Sheep Ireland to all flocks to ensure all required data is captured accurately.

Data recording

• All data is recorded through a handheld device which is sent to the Sheep Ireland database a number of times daily. As each ewe lambs, she is penned with her lambs in an individual pen, where all required data is recorded immediately on a pen board (see below). This data is then subsequently entered into the handheld recording device as lambs are EID tagged.
• These pen boards are attached to each individual lambing pen. They are simply cut from recycled plastic corriboard and we use whiteboard markers to fill them out. Lambs are EID tagged at approximately 6-12 hours of age. We do not tag lambs immediately after birth, waiting until they are dry and suckling happily. As we are also DNA sampling each lamb born, best advice to is wait a number of hours after lambing to minimise the potential of birth fluids affecting the quality of the DNA sample being collected from the lamb. 
• We score each lambing event for lambing difficulty, lamb vigour, ewe mothering ability, ewe milk. Lambs are weighed and the DOB, sex, sire and dam information is all captured.

Other information to capture

These CPT flocks are very productive commercial sheep farms. There is quite a number of ewes carrying triplet lambs and the objective is always to foster these lambs onto other ewes carrying single lambs. This fostering process will often occur in advance of the lamb being EID tagged with the official DAFM tags. In these cases, these lambs must be very carefully tracked. Small management tags and the pen boards are critical to achieving this.