Ultrasound Scanning

Catalogue entries for premier ram sales are being prepared by some breed societies at present and we are prioritising Ultrasound scanning for these breeds. Last week 25 flocks were visited and ultrasonically scanned and had all lambs in the flock weighed. Due to the number of flocks left to visit for scanning, we will not have all LambPlus flocks scanned in advance of the catalogue generation for each sale. We will however attempt to scan the breeder’s flocks, intending on attending each premier sale. We encourage breeders attending their respective breed premier sales to contact us if they have not already been scanned. We will do our best to accommodate any such breeder as soon as possible. All lambs being ultrasonically scanned need to be tagged with the official NSIS tag. Full requirements for the scanning visit were circulated to all breeders by letter a number of weeks ago.

Selecting Replacements in the CPT

As lambs are starting to become fit for slaughter across the CPT flocks next week we plan to select the replacement females for some of the flocks. The aim will be to keep a proportion of ewe lambs from each sire used for mating on the farm last year as well as selecting to a minimum weight. These ewe lambs will remain on the farm and continue to contribute to their sires (and bloodlines) evaluations for the year to come as we see how they perform as breeding ewes in a commercial situation. We will also be Ultrasound scanning the heaviest lambs before slaughter so that we can build up a picture on the correlation between the scanning data and the carcass information.

Pedigree Breeder Workshops

The first of the pedigree breeder workshops will take place next week and preparations are well under way. We would encourage as many pedigree breeders as possible to come along and learn more about the breed improvement programme. See Leaflet below for details.

Directions: Teagasc Event signs will be used to direct you to the farms

• Aidan & Anne Murphy – Farm will be sign posted from the N11 approximately 1 km north of Camolin (about ten minutes driving from Camolin)
•  Arthur & Patrick O’Keeffe – Farm is on the N73 between Mallow and Mitchelstown (approximately 7 km from Mallow; event actually being held in Susan O’Keeffe’s farm yard)
• Eamon Duffy – Farm located just of the N52 between Kells and Mullingar (approximately. 6 km from Kells)
• James McKane – Farm located just 1km from the traffic lights in Killygordon on the N15.
•  Michael Murphy – Farm is located on the N17 between Tuam and Claregalway (approx. 6 miles south of Tuam)