If you’re like me, you will want to remove as much risk and uncertainty around the financial performance of your farm as possible.
Every time new genetics are brought in to your flock (females or males), there is a risk that these animals will not perform as well as expected.
As a result, you could end up with a poor scan rate, lambing performance or poor weaning weights – all of which can fundamentally chip away at the potential profitability of the farm and motivation of the farmer.
That’s where €uro-Stars come in. €uro-Stars are an extra tool to help farmers make more informed decisions about the rams they are about to buy into their flock, thereby removing some of the unnecessary risk.
Are the €uro-Stars of every
animal always right?
Definitely not. Why use them then, if they are not always correct? It’s simple: because, on average, they work.
As a comparison, take buying a car. A car with low mileage is, on average, better or less likely to breakdown than the equivalent car with high mileage; not always, but on average it is. The same applies to the €uro-Stars. A ram with five stars is on average better than the equivalent type of ram with a one-star rating.
There will always be animals that move from their original €uro-Star rating as more data becomes available on their bloodline. Part of our role in Sheep Ireland is to continue to reduce the potential for movements in €uro-Stars year after year. We do this by adding more traits to the index, collecting more data for existing traits and updating the genetic evaluation to include the most up-to-date research from Ireland and across the world.
As the old saying goes, one swallow does not make a summer. The same applies for the purchase of one ram. For €uro-Stars to make a significant difference in your flock, you need to commit to continuously introducing four- and five-star animals into your flock, and this should become part of your breeding policy.
Similar to grassland management, if you want to improve the P and K indices of a paddock, it’s not as simple as applying one bag of 18:6:12 in the spring and then expecting maximum performance from that paddock for the next few years.
Yes, that one bag will have helped somewhat, but in order to see a significant difference, you need to carefully manage and apply more P and K over a number of years to see the maximum return, just like with buying rams.
If, for example, you want to increase your pregnancy scanning percentage or the growth rates of your lambs, you need to continuously introduce sires that have good €uro-Stars and not expect one ram to drastically change the flock’s performance on his own.
There are also some steps you can take to reduce the risk of the €uro-Stars of your rams moving. The most important one is to source rams with high accuracy levels. The higher the accuracy of the index, the more information there is available to produce that star rating. The more information behind the star rating, the less likely it is to move.
You should also be aiming to buy from linked flocks. Animals from unlinked flocks cannot have their stars compared with animals from another flock and can only be compared with other animals within the same flock. The evaluations could move up or down once this flock increases the strength of its genetic linkage to the rest of the breed.
Buy genes and not more feed
There are two things that affect the way a ram looks on sale day: management (ie diet and health) and genetics. Sometimes one of these areas can overshadow the other and it is important that you, as a buyer, can tell the difference. When selecting a new ram, it is important to remember that the only thing he is going to contribute to your flock is genetics. A ram with poor growth potential in the right hands can still thrive very well, with a good health and nutrition programme, but unless you are willing to feed his lambs with costly additional feed in the same way as their sire was reared, then they are not going to perform for you.
What’s happening on the ground?
Checking to make sure the indices are delivering as they should be is a vital part of any breeding programme. If the indices are helping to predict more profitable animals, then the evaluations are working.
In Table 1, we can see the performance of one-star and five-star animals in the CPT during the 2017 season. The five-star animals are outperforming the one-star animals across all the major traits. And while the difference in performance in any of the traits is not major, when you combine the improvements across the traits, it has a major effect on profitability.
Do five-star rams generate more profit?
Yes. A new piece of research from Teagasc using the newly developed bio-economic model shows that the expected difference in profitability from a flock consistently using five-star v non-recorded rams to breed all its replacements and factory lambs to have in increased net profit of €5/ewe/year.
This is happening through increased ewe efficiency, increased lamb thrive and a lower labour input requirement.
Where to find your next
€uro-Star ram
Ramsearch.ie: farmers can visit this website and search for rams based on breed, age, location and €uro-Star rating. There have been over 100,000 searches on Ramsearch.ie since the site was launched in 2015.Sheep Ireland guide and directory of breeders: this is a list of performance-recording flocks and some information about Sheep Ireland. This can be found at www.sheep.ie or by requesting a copy by emailing query@sheep.ie.LambPlus elite multi-breed ram sale: each year, Sheep Ireland runs an elite sale for performance-recording flocks. All flocks entered in the sale have a minimum threshold to meet, as well as the individual rams. Each ram must be a five-star, with an accuracy greater than 35% and be from a flock that has had a Sheep Ireland technician visit the flock that year, making this the most elite sale in the country for commercial farmers to purchase their next stock ram.This year, the sale takes place on Saturday 25 August in Tullamore Mart, with over 250 rams from five different breeds expected to enter. The catalogue and further information will be available on sheep.ie prior to the sale.
Genetic evaluations work. This has been shown in other sheep industries and in other animal sectors in Ireland and around the world.
We can see the Irish €uro-Stars are working by looking at the Sheep Ireland central progeny test (CPT) and the INZAC flock in Teagasc.
€uro-Star indices for individual rams may move, but by consistently purchasing high-index breeding rams, a flock will make genetic progress, leading to higher flock performance at farmer and national level.
For the upcoming 2018 ram sale season, we urge farmers to seek out and include the €uro-Star indices as one of the selection criteria in selecting your new stock ram.
For more information, call 023-882 0451 or visit www.sheep.ie.
Updates and additions to the Sheep Ireland €uro-Star evaluation - with more on the way
The Sheep Ireland €uro-Stars can be broken down into four sections: maternal, lambing, production (growth) and health.
Before the first evaluation this spring, updates were introduced to the lambing and health sections of the evaluation. We are currently working on the remaining two: production and maternal.
These updates are now possible and necessary, because when the Sheep Ireland €uro-Star evaluations were first produced almost 10 years ago, there were lots of unknowns, as there was not a huge bank of Irish sheep performance data from which conclusions could be drawn.
Over the last few years, we have managed to do this through LambPlus and the CPT.
With this data behind us, now we can further fine-tune the evaluations prior to the 2019 season. What this will mean is that some animals’ €uro-Stars will get re-ranked. However, the €uro-Stars will become more accurate at predicting the future performance of sheep and their profitability.
Once these changes are in place and the accuracy of the evaluations has increased, we plan on rolling out across-breed evaluations, similar to what is available in cattle.
This will allow farmers to directly compare the €uro-Stars of two rams from two different breeds, giving farmers more choice and more information before purchasing a ram.
If you’re like me, you will want to remove as much risk and uncertainty around the financial performance of your farm as possible.
Every time new genetics are brought in to your flock (females or males), there is a risk that these animals will not perform as well as expected.
As a result, you could end up with a poor scan rate, lambing performance or poor weaning weights – all of which can fundamentally chip away at the potential profitability of the farm and motivation of the farmer.
That’s where €uro-Stars come in. €uro-Stars are an extra tool to help farmers make more informed decisions about the rams they are about to buy into their flock, thereby removing some of the unnecessary risk.
Are the €uro-Stars of every
animal always right?
Definitely not. Why use them then, if they are not always correct? It’s simple: because, on average, they work.
As a comparison, take buying a car. A car with low mileage is, on average, better or less likely to breakdown than the equivalent car with high mileage; not always, but on average it is. The same applies to the €uro-Stars. A ram with five stars is on average better than the equivalent type of ram with a one-star rating.
There will always be animals that move from their original €uro-Star rating as more data becomes available on their bloodline. Part of our role in Sheep Ireland is to continue to reduce the potential for movements in €uro-Stars year after year. We do this by adding more traits to the index, collecting more data for existing traits and updating the genetic evaluation to include the most up-to-date research from Ireland and across the world.
As the old saying goes, one swallow does not make a summer. The same applies for the purchase of one ram. For €uro-Stars to make a significant difference in your flock, you need to commit to continuously introducing four- and five-star animals into your flock, and this should become part of your breeding policy.
Similar to grassland management, if you want to improve the P and K indices of a paddock, it’s not as simple as applying one bag of 18:6:12 in the spring and then expecting maximum performance from that paddock for the next few years.
Yes, that one bag will have helped somewhat, but in order to see a significant difference, you need to carefully manage and apply more P and K over a number of years to see the maximum return, just like with buying rams.
If, for example, you want to increase your pregnancy scanning percentage or the growth rates of your lambs, you need to continuously introduce sires that have good €uro-Stars and not expect one ram to drastically change the flock’s performance on his own.
There are also some steps you can take to reduce the risk of the €uro-Stars of your rams moving. The most important one is to source rams with high accuracy levels. The higher the accuracy of the index, the more information there is available to produce that star rating. The more information behind the star rating, the less likely it is to move.
You should also be aiming to buy from linked flocks. Animals from unlinked flocks cannot have their stars compared with animals from another flock and can only be compared with other animals within the same flock. The evaluations could move up or down once this flock increases the strength of its genetic linkage to the rest of the breed.
Buy genes and not more feed
There are two things that affect the way a ram looks on sale day: management (ie diet and health) and genetics. Sometimes one of these areas can overshadow the other and it is important that you, as a buyer, can tell the difference. When selecting a new ram, it is important to remember that the only thing he is going to contribute to your flock is genetics. A ram with poor growth potential in the right hands can still thrive very well, with a good health and nutrition programme, but unless you are willing to feed his lambs with costly additional feed in the same way as their sire was reared, then they are not going to perform for you.
What’s happening on the ground?
Checking to make sure the indices are delivering as they should be is a vital part of any breeding programme. If the indices are helping to predict more profitable animals, then the evaluations are working.
In Table 1, we can see the performance of one-star and five-star animals in the CPT during the 2017 season. The five-star animals are outperforming the one-star animals across all the major traits. And while the difference in performance in any of the traits is not major, when you combine the improvements across the traits, it has a major effect on profitability.
Do five-star rams generate more profit?
Yes. A new piece of research from Teagasc using the newly developed bio-economic model shows that the expected difference in profitability from a flock consistently using five-star v non-recorded rams to breed all its replacements and factory lambs to have in increased net profit of €5/ewe/year.
This is happening through increased ewe efficiency, increased lamb thrive and a lower labour input requirement.
Where to find your next
€uro-Star ram
Ramsearch.ie: farmers can visit this website and search for rams based on breed, age, location and €uro-Star rating. There have been over 100,000 searches on Ramsearch.ie since the site was launched in 2015.Sheep Ireland guide and directory of breeders: this is a list of performance-recording flocks and some information about Sheep Ireland. This can be found at www.sheep.ie or by requesting a copy by emailing query@sheep.ie.LambPlus elite multi-breed ram sale: each year, Sheep Ireland runs an elite sale for performance-recording flocks. All flocks entered in the sale have a minimum threshold to meet, as well as the individual rams. Each ram must be a five-star, with an accuracy greater than 35% and be from a flock that has had a Sheep Ireland technician visit the flock that year, making this the most elite sale in the country for commercial farmers to purchase their next stock ram.This year, the sale takes place on Saturday 25 August in Tullamore Mart, with over 250 rams from five different breeds expected to enter. The catalogue and further information will be available on sheep.ie prior to the sale.
Genetic evaluations work. This has been shown in other sheep industries and in other animal sectors in Ireland and around the world.
We can see the Irish €uro-Stars are working by looking at the Sheep Ireland central progeny test (CPT) and the INZAC flock in Teagasc.
€uro-Star indices for individual rams may move, but by consistently purchasing high-index breeding rams, a flock will make genetic progress, leading to higher flock performance at farmer and national level.
For the upcoming 2018 ram sale season, we urge farmers to seek out and include the €uro-Star indices as one of the selection criteria in selecting your new stock ram.
For more information, call 023-882 0451 or visit www.sheep.ie.
Updates and additions to the Sheep Ireland €uro-Star evaluation - with more on the way
The Sheep Ireland €uro-Stars can be broken down into four sections: maternal, lambing, production (growth) and health.
Before the first evaluation this spring, updates were introduced to the lambing and health sections of the evaluation. We are currently working on the remaining two: production and maternal.
These updates are now possible and necessary, because when the Sheep Ireland €uro-Star evaluations were first produced almost 10 years ago, there were lots of unknowns, as there was not a huge bank of Irish sheep performance data from which conclusions could be drawn.
Over the last few years, we have managed to do this through LambPlus and the CPT.
With this data behind us, now we can further fine-tune the evaluations prior to the 2019 season. What this will mean is that some animals’ €uro-Stars will get re-ranked. However, the €uro-Stars will become more accurate at predicting the future performance of sheep and their profitability.
Once these changes are in place and the accuracy of the evaluations has increased, we plan on rolling out across-breed evaluations, similar to what is available in cattle.
This will allow farmers to directly compare the €uro-Stars of two rams from two different breeds, giving farmers more choice and more information before purchasing a ram.
This is a subscriber-only article
SHARING OPTIONS: