Preliminary results were published last week from the first sheep performance recording test in the UK that allows rams to be compared across different breeds.

Existing programmes using estimated breeding values (EBVs), and currently run by the main sheep breed societies, only allow within breed comparisons of rams.

However, the RamCompare project, launched by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) three years ago, includes commercial data and seeks to rank rams on commercially important traits. The first phase of the project involved the analysis of growth and carcase traits of lambs from over 4,000 ewes over two seasons.

Ewes were bred to 70 leading terminal sire rams from five breeds – Charollais, Meatlinc, Suffolk, Texel and Hampshire Down. The preliminary results published last week show that variations in performance across 10 terminal traits ranged just as widely within breeds as across breeds.

The new composite index of overall carcase merit, which considers carcase weight, carcase conformation and carcase fat class, was topped by a Texel ram, PRH1500573, from the Handbank flock of Bob Payne, Sheffield.

Six farms in Britain were involved in the first phase of the project and information from 6,000 lambs was collected.

Full results from the first two years of the programme will be published next year when kill data from another 1,500 lambs, born in late spring 2017, will be available.

NI input

In the second phase of the programme, which began in autumn 2017, 67 rams were used through both natural service and artificial insemination.

The research flock from the Agri Food and Biosciences (AFBI) in NI is being used in this second phase along with eight farms in Britain.

Some of the rams from AFBI’s flock are performance-recorded in both the Signet system that is used in the UK, and the Sheep Ireland system used in the Republic of Ireland. This could allow these rams to act as references to link the two systems together for the first time through the RamCompare project.

The differences in the two performance recording systems currently makes it difficult for sheep breeders looking to buy rams based on EBVs from both the UK and the Republic of Ireland, to undertake subsequent performance recording of their progeny.