Sheep Breeding Records

Whether you are a pedigree breeder or a commercial breeder, keeping accurate breeeding records can be used to seriosuly improve the performance of your flock.

Pedigree Breeder or Commercial Breeder

From the breeding record point of view there is no difference between the pedigree breeder or commercial breeder. They both rely on the link between Lambs, Sire and Dam in order to identify performance. The real difference being a pedigree breader may have his animals registered with a breed society, a commercial breeder may not. A pedigree breeder may only be interested in the pedigree, where as a commercial breeder may be more interested in performance. There is no reason why these views may not be combined. Why should a pedigree breeder not be breeding animals with high commercial value.

The term 'Pedigree' has more to do with the registration of the animal with the breed society than its performance.

Accurate identification of the animal, its sire(RAM) and Dam(EWE)

The real secret to breeding records is the accurate identifcation of the animal it's Sire and Dam. These are the link that allows us to analyse perfomance., specifcally of sire or dam ofspring.

Since the introduction of EID tags in 2010 this has become much easier and allows us to record 1000's of lambs with a little effort. This is however more effort than not doing it at all!

Good Animals - Pedigree or Not

There is no reason a pedigree breeder should not use performance tools to breeder better animals. The texel breeders have been doing this for years. SIGNET is also based arround specifc breeds, though commercial breeders can also benifit signet recording and EBV's.See SIGNET recording

Basic Performance

What makes a good animal may be open to personal belief but there are two clear factors which hopefully we can all agree on.

1. We want to breed animals that grow well (not neccessarily quick) but grow well with the seaon to their maximum potential.

2. We want more lambs as this makes us more money.

So a good ewe is one that has twins and gets them to a good weight before weaning!. Or gives us a realy good single!

Weighing

Our basic measure of performance is weighing, and we want to start early - 8 weeks!

An early weight at 8 weeks is important as this is when the ewe has done most of her work and the lamb is starting to be process more grass. The lamb will start eating grass from any early age but gets most of its nutrient fron mums milk. Good ewes produce better lambs at 8 weeks than poor ewes. Identifying and getting rid of the poor ewes will improve the flock and your performance. Thus identifying the lamb its mum and its date of birth are critical to this.

Getting rid or the ewes giving us poor lambs at 8 week is not a difficult concept. Selecting breeding females based on their 8 week weight is also easy to understand. Basically is the ewelamb had a good 8 week weight its mum must be good. These are the genetics we want to breed from. After 8 weeks lamb are growing on and you start to become their main provider. Your decisions regarding what field they are in, your parasite control and your aims start to effect the animals overal performance.

Sire Genetics

Having said that the lambs performance is all down to the ewe, you may wonder why the sire matters. Well it matters and matters more if we are breeding your replacement ewes.

Terminal Sire - High Bred Vigor (heterosis) - Lambs To Slaughter

Terminal sires are described such because we intend to send their lambs to slaughter. Thus terminal sires are breed for their meat qualities rather than their materal qualities. We also however use the high bred vigor that you get from a cross bred lambs. High bred vigour can improve the grow rate considerably - so heavier lambs at weaning.

Maternal Sire - Breeding More Ewes

The lamb inherits genetics from it's sire and dam, I think we get that!, but just because mum was a good mother does not mean that the ewe lamb will be a good mother, it may be the lamb gets dad's genetics rather than mums, so we need to be sure dad was breed from a good mother as well. Maternal improvement can be a long drawn out process and take years to see a real improvement. Retension, or poor ewe lamb selection can hold this back.  Which is why when selecting a maternal pure bred sire it is so important. However a crosbred ewe looks good to start with as she gets the high bred vigor, this will degrad as the breeding stabalises. If you continue you will loose the high bred vigor effect and you may not have the maternal ewes that you thought were so good. It is also possible that you do not get lambs looking quite as expected. A cross bred ewe can produce lambs looking like her dad or her mum. So if the ewes mum was a Welsh Mount and here Dad was a texel, you may get a lamb looking more like a welsh mountain ewe rather than a texel. This can persist for many generations with the odd lamb popping out looking like a great great ancestor. Which is why having records going back years is so important.

Records start with Tupping

The breeding season starts with a tupping record, which may or may not identify a specific tup if you choose to mob mate (3 tups in a field with 100 ewes). See Tupping Records

Scanning - How many Lambs

The season continues with scanning, allowing us to identify barren ewes, feeding groups etc and analysing tup performance. See Scanning Records

Lambing - Lamb identification

The highlite of the season depending on your perspective, lambing. Start to count the lambs and monitor their performance. See Lambing Records

BCS - Body Condition Scores - EWE

The size and condition of our breeding females has a big impact on our lamb production. Starving mothers struggle to feed their ofspring!

BCS or body condition scoring can help you in managing your flock and maintaining good production. The BCS is part of the weight record for an animal and normally recorded at a weighing point. For example weight of the ewe pre tupping. BCS providing the distinction between a heavy bodied but thin ewe, or a small light but fat one. Body condition scoring however can be confusing it not all stockman are using the same scoring system. Unlike a weight which is rust read of the scales normaly in kilo's. AHDB do provide some more guidance on body condition scoring which may be useful, See AHDB Webite

Breeding Traits

Breeding traits include anything you want other than pedigree information and weights. You can literally record what ever you want by creating your own custom breeding trait and find and analysis animals that score higher or have the trait. So how about, Udder Scoring, Wool Quality, Horn Size, Lamb Vigor, Wool Shedding, Number of Spots, length of horns, Good feet, Number of feet ( what would we do for a lamb with 4 back legs!) sorry only joking but you get the idea. You can record any trait of the animal you want.

Index's and EBV's

Index's and EBV's tend to come from SIGNET, SIL, Breed Plan, or similar agency that produce breeding index's and EBV's by comparing animals across multiple farm's or businesses using BLUP. You may import these as breeding traits and find and analyse animals for specific values. FarmIT 3000 has specific reports for SIGNET and SIL. It also can directly import data from SIGNET and check for animals in the SIGNET system. We like this!

EBV's and Indexes are extreamly useful when it comes to perfromance recording large flocks. BLUP (best unbiased linear prediction) ( a subject in its own right) uses the relationship between animals to compare traits. So not just who is the sire or dam. but how do sibling, cousines and distant relatives perform. Although it is sometimes difficult to see why one animal has higher figures than another, BLUP is normally correct if the information supplied is correct. The term 'best' does not do it rustice, 'Briilient' may be a closer description.

So Index's and EBV's have their place, what often let's them down is poor sheep management or farm conditions. However it is highly likely that your best animal will have the highest index on your farm.

Look's Can Be Deceiving

Lambing and raising lambs can take it out of a mother, just like it can in humans so it is unsurprising that at the end of a season your best ewes may look rather deflated or worse. It is also a fact that a ewe that ditched her lambs shortly after lambing and has acheived poor lamb growth may well be in the best of health and condition when the season closes. So keep an eye on the lambs and check the ewes against the performance of their lambs or you may be culling the wrong one.

Ewe Efficency - Big or Small is not always efficient

Ewe efficency is a way of describing a ewes performance based on her size and the size of her lambs at weaning. The theory being we do not want too big a ewe as she will cost alot to feed and keep. Easy to understand!

However when looking at efficiency we must remember the size of lamb we want. Efficency is normally calculated by adding together the lamb(s) weight and comparing it to the ewe as a percentage.

Ewe weighs 70 Kg Lambs Weigh 70 Kg (2 x 35 Kg) Ewe is therefore 100% efficient

Ewe Weighs 90Kg and only weans one 28Kg Lamb Ewe is not efficient! Cull her she is too big!

BUT!  small ewe  40kg (native breed hill ewe) producing 2 x 20Kg Lambs i.e 100% efficient, but maybe we are not quite getting the lambs we want.

Maybe we should focus on a Commercially viable Lambs at 35Kg.