Meghan Cornelius from the Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia, discusses the use of Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBVs) with sheep breeder Lynley Anderson from Anderson Rams.
In this video
Meghan Cornelius, Development Officer, Department of Agriculture and Food Western Australia
Lynley Anderson, Sheep Breeder, Kojonup, Western Australia
Transcript
Meghan: There’s a lot interest these days in Australian Sheep Breeding Values, we've got producers talking more and more and wondering what it's all about, and thinking more about objective measurement of the animals rather than just the way they look. You guys have been doing a lot of measurement for many years, and part of sheep genetics since the beginning. What got you into it?
Lynley: We started with objective measurement back in the sixties, after we bought some rams and their progeny didn't match; they didn't resemble the rams that we bought. So we started measuring the things that we could, which were clean fleece weight micron and body weight to try and breed some better sheep, because we couldn't rely on just buying a ram that looked good and expecting it to make some improvements for us.
What we found was we made quite a bit improvement with objective measurement but it wasn't enough because we found that we were selecting for the early born singles because they weighed heavier at yearling age. They cut more wool and they were finer than the twins, so we were discounting the twins and the progeny from our maidens. So in 2002 when they started the pilot project for sheep genetics, we jumped at the chance to do that.
And from that time we've been doing tagging at birth to record full pedigree on the animals, and a birth weight and a birth date, and an awful lot of measurements throughout their life; fleece measurements and carcase traits.
Meghan: And you are focusing on a more dual-purpose sheep, aren't you, so you are focusing on wool and meat traits?
Lynley: Yeah, what we are trying to breed for is a robust, productive, easy care fertile sheep. One of the traits that we really wanted to concentrate on was worm resistance, so we could cut out drenching altogether and we've done that.
Meghan: Very good. And it's something you're going to continue with into the future?
Lynley: Yes absolutely, I know they work, breeding values work and we've proven that over thirteen years.
Meghan: If you had any advice for anyone thinking about starting objective measurements, if they haven't been, what would you say?
Lynley: Pick the key traits that are important to you and learn about them, just look at them because there are breeding values for an awful lot of traits and it can get confusing but just focus on the ones that are important for your flock and the ones for the improvements that you want to make.
There's always an index if you choose an index that’s applicable to your breeding and you use that or talk to your ram breeder who does breeding values and let them help you choose rams that suit what you're trying to achieve at home.
End of transcript
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