Posted: 26 June 2025

Performance Recording of Sheep

What is performance recording?  What records are needed? How are they recorded?  What benefits are there in moving to a performance recorded flock?

Performance recording of sheep is in some ways similar to the movement many years ago to milk record dairy cows.  Now it’s almost expected that dairy cow herds will record milk yields and milk quality, perhaps through an external company or perhaps through an automated parlour system.  For sheep, the single most valuable metric that a breeder can record is the total weight of lamb produced by each ewe. This is a measure of 3 main things, the prolificy of the ewe (number of lambs born), milkability of the ewe (how much milk she produces) and the motherability of the ewe (how good she is at mothering the lambs).
Previously, we have discussed the importance of linking lambs to their mothers at birth, by tagging the lambs and recording the lamb tag numbers against each ewe.  Even better if the tupping details have been recorded for each ewe as the lambs’ fathers also impact the growth rate of the lambs. Now as we head into the month of May, the first-born lambs of the year are reaching, or have reached 3 to 4 months of age.  This is a critical age at which to weigh the lambs, if their weights are to be credited back to their mothers in order to identify the best performing ewes and best performing rams.
Lamb weights can be recorded in a number of ways.  There are a number of phone apps available, Select Sheepware being one of them, which will allow the user to manually record lamb weights.   Manual recording on a phone app is very suitable for small flocks where the user has time to enter the lamb number and the lamb weight on the weighing screen in the app and save.  Many sheep farmers however have invested in Bluetooth enabled scales.  These connect to phones and EID readers wirelessly and allow high speed accurate recording of larger flocks. The Agrident readers (also branded as Allflex) which are supplied by TGM connect directly to most Bluetooth scales and allow the user to record weights almost as fast as the lambs can be put through the weigh crate.  The higher models of scale will show weight gain per day in real time on the scale. This allows the user to separate out those lambs which are not gaining weight at a sufficient rate.

Having recorded the lamb weights (on phone app or EID reader), to evaluate the performance of both ewes and rams, software is needed which will link the lamb weights back to the mothers and round the lamb weights to a standardised value.  Select Sheepware is set to round to 90-day weights, but the software allows the user to choose a different setting for this.Some users prefer to round to 100-day weights. With the total weight of lamb at the chosen weight showing on the ewes’ record cards and in the performance reports, it then becomes easy to separate the highest performers.
It is critical therefore to get the lambs weighed if the ewe performance is to be available for this year’s lamb crop.  Some users will weigh the lambs around 56 days and then again at around 90 to 100 days. Select Sheepware uses both these weights and calculates both 56-day and 90-day weights if both have been recorded.
Apart from evaluating ewe performance, to evaluate lamb performance as the season progresses gives significant benefit to the flock owner also – poorly performing lambs, based on weight gain per day, can be identified and attended to. Perhaps there is a worm problem or a disease problem or a nutrition issue.
Early diagnosis of worms, disease and/or nutrition issues in the flock leads to early intervention and the benefits will be seen when remedial action is taken quickly and early.  From the ewe’s perspective, knowing the high performers and the low performers leads to informed decisions for culling, breeding and replacement selection, all leading to increased profit for the farm. The bottom line for any fam – how to increase profit.  Taking the ram performance into account (average 90- day/100-day weight of his offspring, number of lambs per ewe tupped etc) leads to informed breeding decisions regarding rams used and rams to use again next season.
The process of selecting the best and worst performing ewes and the female lambs from these sheep will be covered in a later news item. Both the Agrident /Allflex readers and the Select Sheepware mobile app will allow quick and easy drafting of selected animals according to alerts set.
For more information on Select Sheepware, both the computer version and the mobile version (android and iPhone)

please contact TGM at info@tgmsoftware.com or T: 028 9268 9681 for advice and to discuss your own situation. .