The Belclare is best recognised as a prolific sheep breed that was developed in Ireland. The breed was developed by Dr Seamus Hanrahan and his colleagues in the An Forus Taluntais (now Teagasc) research centre in Belclare, which is located a short distance from Tuam in Co Galway. While breed development work took place throughout the 1970s and 1980s, it was in August 1982 that farmers across Ireland managed to get their hands on Belclare sheep with the first output of rams taking place at the An Forus Taluntais institute farm in Belclare.

The breed is returning to its roots with a celebratory event and the Belclare Sheep society’s national championships taking place on Sunday 21 May as part of the Connacht Sheep Shearing Festival, which will be held in Corofin. Belclare is part of the parish of Corofin and local breeder Sonny Jennings from Cahergal, Tuam, says there is great excitement to see the breed return.

“The Belclare breed is something people in the area are very proud to be associated with. The institute in Belclare did a lot for sheep breeding in the country and was always looking to demonstrate practices to help farmers improve efficiency and increase output. It’s great to have the opportunity to be able to welcome the breed back from all corners of the country and to be able to do so in the 35th year since it left,” said Sonny.

Breed make-up

The early Belclare breed was formed following trials with many prolific sheep breeds, with the primary aim to provide farmers with a vehicle to lift the national flock’s average litter size of just 1.2 to 1.25 lambs. The earliest form of the breed was developed in a breeding programme involving the Finnish Landrace and the Galway sheep breed, which were major components of the national flock at the time. The Finnish Landrace, or Finn sheep – which are native to Finland – are noted for their multiple births with three, four and even five lambs common. Lleyn sheep, which have grown in numbers in Ireland in recent years, were introduced to the breeding mix in the mid-1970s and, according to the society, this formed the basis of the breed.

The first sheep

The first sheep, which were sometimes referred to as the Belclare Improver, met a mixed reaction when first making their way in the national flock. As the breed contained a significant percentage of Finn blood, litter size was high and was something some breeders were not prepared for. Conformation and strength were traits that were lacking in the earliest breed mix and, to improve this, Texel breeding was utilised in breeding programmes.

The breed continued to develop as a maternal breed, with different breeders preferring different strains or breeding lines. This continues to shape the breed that is present today. Teagasc has maintained its association with the breed with Dr Hanrahan’s career maintaining a strong focus on sheep reproduction until he retired in 2010 while he also worked closely with the Belclare Sheep Society. A flock of pedigree Belclare ewes also remains in Teagasc Athenry and the breed continues to be promoted through initiatives such as the Teagasc BETTER farm sheep programme as a vehicle to drive farm output and ultimately profitability.

The breed continues to generate the same mixed reaction it did as when it first appeared. An increasing number of farmers have utilised Belclare genetics as a component of breeding programmes in recent years to increase prolificacy. Many of these consist of a criss-cross breeding programme or three-way mix to gain the benefits of higher prolificacy but limit its full potential. Given the make-up of the national flock where over 60% of farmers have fewer than 100 sheep recorded on their annual sheep census, it is not surprising that the breed is mainly utilised by larger flocks, with part-time enterprises slower to utilise Belclare breeding.

Events that shaped the breed

As mentioned already, the breed was formed in the 1970s and 1980s, with the first roll-out of genetics to the national flock taking place in 1982. A total of 85 rams were sold at fixed prices, with buyers from 20 counties and 45 rams finding new homes in Wicklow, Carlow, Wexford and Kilkenny. At the same time, a selected pool of rams was made available to farmers in Co Galway for use on synchronised ewes. This included 16 members of the Galway Sheep Breed Society and 13 commercial flocks.

Further sales from the institute in Belclare expanded the breed to 24 out of the 26 counties in the south. Sales took place until 1985 when the Belclare Sheep Society was formed and the society’s first sale was held in Kilkenny. In a meeting in the Royal Hoey Hotel in Athlone on 11 October 1985, Dr Seamus Hanrahan was appointed president, PJ O’Dea, Galway, was appointed chair while Pat O’Dea, Agricultural Institute, and Joe Teasdale, Kilkenny, were appointed secretaries. The committee was made up of Niall Connelly, Louth, Pat Carey, Wicklow, and Tom Sice, Galway.

The Belclare breed has many strong links to Belclare, not least the human link between the breed and Tony Murphy and Padraic Murphy who worked in the institute. The two men looked after the day-to-day management of the sheep breeding flocks from the mid-1970s and are noted as making a worthy contribution to the annual selection and culling decisions that helped shape the breed throughout its development.

Following the recent meeting on the Ovigen project, the Belclare Sheep Society held a meeting about the society’s participation in light of the costs of genotyping in 2017. The society decided that all breeders should continue to fully participate, with the society taking a decision to cover the additional costs in 2017. As all breeders participated in the first phase of genotyping, the society says that the only animals requiring genotyping now are ewe hoggets since born into flocks and stock rams. “The offer by the Ovigen project to cover the main cost of genotyping makes continued full participation possible. The Belclare breed have always strived to make maximum use of advances in genetics and this ensures that the Belclare breed will remain to the forefront of genomic selection and breed improvement,” said a society representative.

The Connacht Spring Show has a wide range of activities taking place with a number of sheep classes and shearing highlights of the event. The shearing competition is said to be building ahead of the all-Ireland and all-nations sheep shearing championships, which take place in Kiltoom over the June bank holiday weekend.