Is performance recording hill breeds a waste of time?
Library photo © FLPA/Rex/ Shutterstock Major opportunities to boost sheep profit and performance are being missed when sheep breeders shun performance recording, warn leading geneticists.
New figures from AHDB Beef and Lamb show genetic gains driven through estimated breeding values (EBVs) are worth £10.7m to the sheep sector every year based on faster growth rates, lower feed costs and carcass yields.
But large segments of the UK flock are not recorded, despite growing demand for recorded sires in certain breeds and regions, Signet breeding manager Sam Boon told Farmers Weekly at the Sheep Breeders Round Table last week.
FW online poll (90 votes)
Should we focus on producing EBVs for hill breeds?
Yes 64%
No 36%
Focusing on the lack of adoption of EBVs within hill breeds, he said modern handling equipment, electronic identification and the possibility of DNA parentage techniques in the future offer opportunities for extensive sheep farms not available 10-15 years ago.
See also: Is the time right to start performance recording hill sheep?
However, he acknowledged there were core challenges to overcome. “It is very much maternal traits that are of importance in the hill ewe and they take longer to come through.
“You can’t assess them on looks alone and the only way you can actually make improvements in these traits is through measurements.”
For performance recording
Tom Welsh
Farming to 540m at Mossfennan farm, Peeblesshire
Peeblesshire hill farmer Tom Welsh admitted performance recording can be difficult in hill flocks – especially recording parentage. But he said once you have done this, everything else is easy.
Mr Welsh runs a 1,050-head flock of Scottish Blackface sheep and has been Signet recorded since 1986. He weighs lambs at the appropriate time and back scans them too. He also uses easy-read tags to check numbers on ewes from 20m away.
“We are lucky we have enough fields to be able to single-sire mate. Raddles don’t work, as DNA studies show 22% of twins born from multi-sire-mated ewes had different sires.
“In 2008 we did a detailed evaluation of flock performance since 1986 and found we were producing 200% more kilogrammes from the same farm, fertiliser, breed and bought-in feed. We do it because the traditional breeders don’t produce tups that consistently breed healthy daughters that thrive on our farm.”
Sam Wharry
County Antrim
While data recording at lambing can result in “lots of soggy notebooks”, hill farmer and NSA national chairman Sam Wharry said collecting weights could be timed to coincide with flock management.
“The biggest problem is establishing birth data at lambing time.” He added that it was “amazing” what could be achieved if there was genuine desire.
“Weighing at about eight weeks can coincide with lamb vaccinations, while weighing at 21 weeks can be factored in with weaning.”
Mr Wharry started flock recording in 1997, when he was concerned about the size of his ewes, which graze up to 336m.
John Yeomans
650 recorded Beulahs, Welshpool
“When we started recording in 1996, our base was 100 points. Now our top ewe is 230. It is a massive difference,” said John Yeomans.
“Work through the Beulah Improvement Group has shown that every point in genetic gain is worth 20g a lamb at weaning weight, 50g in the cross-bred mule lamb for carcass weight and 14p in terms of carcass value,” he added.
Maddy Lewis
100 Welsh Hardy Speckled sheep breeder, Aberystwyth
Maddy Lewis has seen how difficult dealing with small datasets can be, struggling to do enough on her own farm for selection intensity.
“If we can encourage more people to performance record we would see faster progress and it would be worth it for everyone.
“It is very easy to see which lambs are performing better than others and then take your flock forward. Maternal attributes are a much longer-term phenomenon than carcass traits and meat characteristics,” she said.
Sam Boon
Signet
History shows there are animals that look phenomenal, but are genetically well below average for the population, said Sam Boon.
“Rates of genetic gain in non-recorded flocks, although they do benefit from any genes from recorded flocks, are much lower.”
Mike Coffey
Scotland’s Rural University
Genetic progress has been rapid in the dairy industry because parlour recordings are taken easily, can be done every day and are paid for directly with the milk cheque, said livestock genetics and breeding expert Mike Coffey.
Dr Coffey added breeding companies are becoming interested in sheep genetics.
“If you don’t do it yourselves someone else will do it for you. Phenotypes could be owned by a company, but they could just as easily be owned by an individual farm.”
Ron Lewis
University of Nebraska
Signet requires producers to measure for weaning weights. The score is indicative of milking ability and mother care, which suggests weighing hill ewes ahead of breeding can be a really useful practice as it allows the farm office to keep a record of animal performance.
“In many ways, a sheep doesn’t care about how quickly it grew or how fat it was. These are things the farmer cares about.
“The sheep cares about rearing its young, because that means it is contributing to the next generation.”
Against performance recording
Alan Alderson
Sheep farmer and Swaledale Sheep Breeders Association chairman, Barras Farm, Cumbria
“For many generations we have recorded our pedigree sheep individually, so we know our lines well. Moors are very different and make comparisons difficult. Some are decent, some are horrendously poor. Good in-bye land can be compared, on the other hand.
“It probably would be a good idea if we could performance-record, but there are problems with practicalities. Swaledale lamb crops have gone from 110% to 160% in the past 15 or so years and our scanning results show that things are progressing. The North of England Mule has had challenges in the past, but is still a great machine.”
Brian Knowles
Cumbria
Rough Fell breeder Brian Knowles abandoned performance recording after three years following concerted industry efforts to boost decimated hill flocks in the wake of foot-and-mouth.
He said the sheer quantity of sheep can be a barrier for hill farms, making it “difficult and time-consuming”, with much of the desired information already gauged by a shepherd’s eye and stored mentally.
Grazing up to 427m on Shap Fell near Kendal, Mr Knowles runs 500 purebred Rough Fell and 350 purebred Swaledale ewes, as well as a small half-bred flock sired to a Texel.
“Recording is pointless because I have seen paperwork of rams supposed to be good, but they look as if they wouldn’t be able to do the job,” he told Farmers Weekly. “A lot of it is in my head. We were brought up with it and know one sheep from another.”
People go for bloodlines in hill sheep, not EBVs, said Mr Knowles, who as chairman of the breed society is aware of one Rough Fell breeder interested in performance recording. He said the shearlings recorded at High Borrow Bridge farm with the best figures were consistently the “worst looking”.
Simon Bainbridge
Runs 150 suckler cows and 1,500 breeding ewes in Northumberland
“From the info I have when a Scottish farmer tried it, the sheep were then not hardy enough to live on the hill. Hill sheep on in-bye ground could work, but I am not convinced about recording on hills. For my farm, I wish I could buy recorded hill tups, but we have a kinder farm.”