Lleyn Sheep Society Open Day

On Saturday the 27th May, Sheep Ireland attended an Open Day held by the Lleyn Sheep Society on the farm of Clifford Richardson. It was greatly attended and while the weather didn’t play its part there was plenty of interesting speakers on the day. There was good interest in Sheep Ireland and the Euro-star indexes. People who braved the weather to have a look at the Lleyn stock weren’t disappointed with some top quality stock on display. Please click here to see a video of some of the stock and the crowd on the day.

Genomic Services

• It is now a month since the Genomic Services screen was launched and there has been plenty of activity on it. Orders are coming in steadily for farmers to get their lambs/ewes parentage tested. There have been over 750 orders for genotyping to date.
• If farmers hadn’t been involved with the Ovigen project this would have cost them €12,638.00. The savings that have been made by farmers so far is €9,431.00. This is down to the large amount subsidised by the Ovigen project. This means the cost for farmers was €3,207.00 for the genotyping. When the cost of tags and taggers is added the cost to the farmer so far is €4,227.00.
• Breeders should be aware that there is no deadline as to when they should have their genotyping orders submitted using the online ordering screen; however an important point to note is that the subsidising of genotyping is on a first come first serve basis. Breeders that were not a part of the Ovigen project can still avail of the service to get their animals genotyped. However these farmers will have to pay full cost for this service

Ram Report

Some breeders will have all their weights recorded and will soon be looking into rams for the next breeding season, the ram report is a handy tool for farmers to select which of their own stock rams they would like to use again. It shows the average daily gain and the differences between the lambs at the different weighing stages. See an example of a ram report below.