Sheep Ireland €uroStar Multi-Breed Ram sale will take place on Saturday, August 26th at 11:30 am in Tullamore Mart.
This year, the entry criteria will require breeders to genotype some ewes in their flock. This means that breeders must start making their initial selections by late May to allow sufficient time for animals to be genotyped and any errors corrected.
The most significant change is that the rams entering the sale must be Fully Parentage Verified. That means that the mother and the father of every ram entered must also be genotyped with Sheep Ireland this year.
Sheep Ireland Ram sale – Dates to remember |
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| Recommended date to order DNA sampling kits via your SI account | End of May |
| Recommended date to send DNA to the lab | Beginning of June |
| Last date for sending DNA samples to the lab (be aware that this won’t give time for re-sampling) | June 30th |
| Deadline for sale entries | August 7th (Monday) |
| Provisional sales catalogue published | August 11th (Friday) |
| Sale substitutes deadline | August 17th (Thursday, 1 pm) |
| Final sale catalogue generated | August 18th (Friday) |
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Sheep Ireland Sale |
August 26th (Saturday, 11:30 am) |
Entry Criteria
Each year, the sale entry criteria are increased to ensure that farmers are presented with the highest standard of rams possible. The success of the sale has been primarily driven by its high level.
This year’s requirements include:
- €uroStar Index – All rams must be 5 Stars for either the Replacement or Terminal index at the time of catalogue printing. These can be checked using your Sheep Ireland online €uroStar report for the most up-to-date genetic evaluation results.
- Genotyped – All rams entered in the sale must be genotyped via the Sheep Ireland genomic service.
- Fully Parentage Verified – All rams must be fully parentage (Sire and Dam) verified. That means that the mother and father of every ram entered must also be genotyped with Sheep Ireland this year. This was communicated before the 2022 Ram sale. Where a sire or dam mismatches and is removed, the animal must have a new sire or dam assigned via genomic parentage predictions to be eligible for the sale.
- Data Quality Index (DQI)– Breeders wishing to enter sheep in the sale must have a flock DQI of 75% or higher at the time of catalogue printing.
- Scrapie Type – All rams entered in the sale must be Scrapie Type 1, 2, or 3 (same as SIS requirements). The information is available in your genomic results screen.
- Flock Linkage Status– Flocks must be genetically linked in 2023. You can check your flock linkage status by visiting your €uroStar profile through your online account. Flock linkage has been updated for 2023 after all the season lambing data has been submitted to the database.
- Ram Inspection– All rams must be physically correct, similar to any breed society sale. Sheep Ireland will conduct a thorough ram inspection on the day and inspect all rams upon entry to the sale. Any sheep which, in the inspector’s opinion, are not physically correct will be rejected immediately.
Number of entries per flock
- Larger flocks contribute more to the national breed improvement program with more data that requires time, effort, and resources to collect. To better reflect this, we have three flock-size bands (as shown below). The size of the flock is determined by the number of pedigree ewes that lambed down to a ram of the same breed.
| No. of Pedigree ewes lambed | No. of Rams |
| 1-29 | 4 |
| 30-49 | 5 |
| 50+ | 6 |
How to enter the sale will be communicated a few weeks before the deadline.