Posted: 3 September 2024

Part 1:

Selection Time Again 
This month, we’re focusing on selection – a key time for improving flock performance.  We’re delighted that Alan Feighery and William Hutchinson have shared their approach to selection.

It’s the time of year again when ewe lambs are selected as replacements for the flock. Hence the ‘Select’ in the name ‘Select Sheepware’. Assisting with selection is one of the main purposes of the software.  Successful flock improvement is about identifying good female performance and conversely the poorer performers.
Sheep breeding has improved greatly in the UK and Irish sheep flocks in recent years. Flock owners are moving in the right direction when it comes to breeding for improved flock performance.  The three genetic companies being used by some of our users are Signet, Sheep Ireland and SIL. But many of our users have seen flock performance gains without using any of the official genetic recording schemes.  For the sale of pedigree stock, it’s very necessary to have official certification of animal EBV values, but for the breeding of your own replacements from your own stock, on farm recording can make a big difference in flock performance within one to two generations.  For users wanting to use both on farm analysis and the EBV indexes and/or star values of the genetic recording companies, Select Sheepware allows the user to import the results from Signet, Sheep Ireland and SIL and the official evaluations are presented in the same report as the on farm calculations. This enables a user to filter by the highest index / star value animals, and to simultaneously filter by the reared 90 day weight as recorded in the software.
The most commonly used metric for evaluation of maternal genetic potential in Select Sheepware is the reared lamb weight per lamb crop.  Select Sheepware allows a user to filter and sort based on this metric.  An interesting observation that George from TGM has made when helping farmers select the best performing ewes in the flock is that if a user sorts the top 30% based on the production this year and compares this to the top 30% based on the average over the last few years (Select Sheepware allows the user to average over six years), the best sheep identified this year are very highly likely to also be the best sheep identified if you run the performance evaluation averaged over 2 or 3 years.  Likewise the ewes at the bottom of the performance scale are likely to have an average over the last 2 or 3 years which puts them at the bottom of the scale in those years also. The conclusion from that is that a good ewe is unlikely to become bad and a badly performing ewe cannot be improved to become good, regardless of what other management interventions you try. It is critical therefore to identify your best and worst performing animals and to breed selectively, if you want to improve overall flock performance.
Whether you opt for your own on farm recording, or to record with one of the genetic evaluation organisations, selective breeding will bring about improvements in flock performance that will make it well worth the effort to record.
What is meant by ‘flock performance’? The measures of flock performance that you expect to improve upon are : number of lambs reared per ewe put to ram, the total 90 day weight of lamb per ewe and reduction in the number of days from birth to sale. For those who weigh their ewes at tupping and include ewe efficiency filters at selection time, overall 90 day ewe efficiency of the flock is also a target metric to include.  Ewe efficiency as measured by Select Sheepware is the total weight of the lambs produced divided by the tupping weight of the mother multiplied by 100. For example, a 75 kg ewe producing 75 kg lamb at 90 days has a 90 day efficiency of 100%.   If you have a 100 kg ewe producing 80 kg lamb and a 65 kg ewe producing 75 kg lamb, the smaller ewe is much more efficient than the big heavy ewe. Those ewes with lower efficiency are resulting in a higher cost per kg lamb produced. The software does the maths. You don’t need to weigh the ewe on the day the tup is introduced. The software calculates the weight closest to the conception date of the ewe, calculating backwards from the lambing date. Around tupping time, the ewes’ weights should remain reasonably stable for a few weeks, so whether you weigh the ewes in the first week of September or the third week of September it should not have much impact upon the efficiency calculation. Remember that the actual efficiency value is not important, it’s the ranking that matters. Which ewes are the most efficient and which are the least.  So if they’re all weighed at the start of September, or they’re all weighed at the end of September, the ranking of best to worst when the results are calculated next season should be the same.

Select Sheepware enables fast and efficient selection on the basis of ewe performance and this enables selection of replacements to be based upon solid mathematical evaluation.  For users considering going down the route of performance recording, it’s critical to have everything in place well before lambing starts. An ideal time is at tupping, when the ewes are likely to be handled and there’s more time to make sure that they’re all tagged, the tags are recorded in a tag reader and transferred into the software so that the ewes’ records are in place when needed at lambing time.

Part 2:

As we continue our selection series we are very grateful to William Hutchinson who shares his approach. William from Kells Co Kilkenny in Ireland runs a flock of 600 breeding ewes, composed of pedigree Easycare, pedigree Texel and pedigree Suffolk. William is currently selling grass only fed shearling rams and he may be contacted at william@pedigreesheep.com or tel 00 353 862510899

William records with Sheep Ireland and uses both Sheep Ireland values and Select Sheepware performance reports for replacement selection. The Sheep Ireland indexes and stars were imported into Select Sheepware (there’s a specific menu in the Sheep Ireland software to create a TGM export file).  There is a strong correlation between ewes with maternal Star of 4 or 5 and ewes at the top of the Select Sheepware selection list.  A few ewes at the top of the Select Sheepware selection list were dropped if their Sheep Ireland star value was less than 4.  When the best ewes had been selected, Select Sheepware identified their female offspring which became the selection pool for replacements.
While Sheep Ireland indexes and stars assist breeding decisions, it’s important for a commercial breeder not to cull on the basis of genetic evaluation results, whether Sheep Ireland, Signet or SIL.   George from TGM says that users must make a very clear distinction between breeding and culling.  He says that if you have individual ewes with exceptional performance – consecutive lamb crops producing twins with excellent lamb weights, you may not want to cull such sheep if they have a low genetic calculation according to any one of the genetic recording companies. Genetic evaluation figures assess the potential for the next generation to improve, but the genetic evaluation results do not indicate whether or not a ewe in the flock is a good performing commercial ewe. Culling is done on the basis of the ewe’s poor performance.  Breeding selection is done on the basis of the genetic evaluation.  Select Sheepware combines both locally recorded performance values with genetic results imported from the genetic companies, to give the user the most comprehensive view of animal data.
A second factor, George says,  to consider in deciding whether or not to cull/replace a ewe, is whether or not the breeding is for the purpose of producing pedigree sellable stock or is it to improve the commercial performance of the flock. When breeding with the aim of producing top quality sellable pedigree stock, ewes with lower genetic index and star results will lower the valuation of their offspring and this will impact the breeding decision as to which ram to put with them. These ewes might be retained for their ability to produce good quality lambs but not for the production of sellable pedigree stock and an appropriate ram selected for this purpose.
When Willam has made his selections, he uses Select Sheepware to transfer the Sheep Ireland star and index values into an APR600 reader.  This reader allows a user to look up data on the screen of the reader in the yard.  William can scan an animal and view the Sheep Ireland evaluation results on the reader screen and make decisions accordingly.

William is a member of the EasycareSheepIreland group. For information on this group, please contact him at william@pedigreesheep.com

Part 3:

Watch!

Watch Here as Alan Feighery drafts his ewes using the AWR300 EID reader

Alan Feighery from Co Offaly, Ireland has run a flock of 160 pedigree breeding sheep for the last 15 years.He works with the EasyCare breed. Alan says they’re low maintenance, have good feet, shed wool, are excellent mothers and require no assistance at lambing.He has been recording using Select Sheepware for a number of years.  Two weeks ago, it was decision time for replacement selection.  Alan’s initial criteria for selection, are lambs from the ewes with the highest total reared lamb 90 days weight and  lambs that are one of a twin.  In Select Sheepware the ewe performance report was sorted by reared lamb 90 day weight. The top 30% of ewes were selected and an alert set to ‘GOOD’
Reared lamb weight includes the weight of lambs fostered on and for ewes with triplets, the weight of the one fostered off is subtracted from the total. Ewes with only one reared lamb, but an excellent total reared lamb weight were then checked – a simple double click brought up their history. Ewes with a history of twins were added to the GOOD alert list.
Ewes which had a record of 2 lambs born, but where only one got weighed then had their history checked. If they had a record of excellent lamb production in previous years, they were included in the GOOD alert list. The reason why  both  lambs did not get weighed could have been as a result of a number of factors. One lamb may have died. One lamb may have lost its birth tag or the lamb might have been missed when weighing.
While in the performance section of Select Sheepware, Alan also selected culls on the basis of poor performance and set their alert to CULL.
Finally, Select Sheepware allows the user to select female lambs based on the dam’s alert, so all female lambs where the dam had a GOOD alert were selected.  We checked that none of these were one of a triplet as Alan does not want to allow a female from a triplet into his replacement selection pool. These selected lambs had an alert set to KEEPLAMB (keep lamb as a replacement).  The select Sheepware database was copied into Alan’s Agrident reader and that was him set for drafting.
The video shows Alan running the lambs through the race and using the Agrident reader, quickly drafting out the lambs with KEEPLAMB alert.  The lambs selected for replacement are drafted in one direction, while the remaining lambs are drafted the other. The reader displays a visible alert and simultaneously gives a loud audible alert for the replacement lambs.
George from TGM says this sort of selection has the potential to significantly improve overall performance in a reasonably short timeframe. All lambs selected as replacement are from the best producing mothers on the farm.
Alan’s ewes were run through the race and all with a CULL alert were separated out.  The complete process on the computer took about 1 hour.  George says there is no point linking lambs to mothers and weighing lambs if the user is not prepared to spend a little time filtering and sorting when it comes time to select replacements.  Select Sheepware is strongly focused on this type of selection.