CPT mating 2015

Early next week all breeders that submitted rams for use in the 2015 Central Progeny Test will receive reports on how their ram performed during AI – how many farms they were used on, how many ewes were mated using their semen, how they jumped etc. Each year we attempt to freeze 25 doses of semen for each breeder submitting a ram and details of this frozen semen will be included in the letters.

CPT Ram summary

The majority of rams that entered the programme were used to AI ewes. Similar to previous CPT AI campaigns there was a number of rams that we were unable to use for different reasons – the main two being a refusal to jump to provide semen and poor semen quality. All rams had successfully mated ewes in 2015 in their respective breeders flocks, but unfortunately this does not guarantee that semen quality will be suitable for fresh semen AI and/or freezing. From the 31 rams that entered the programme this year, just 3 rams could not be used to mate CPT ewes. This was expected in advance of assembling our ram list so extra rams were available as cover for this occurrence.

CPT ewes at AI

In total just over 2300 ewes have been AI’d. Each year there are a number of ewes that are not suitable to be AI’d on a particular day for a number of reasons, some of the most common being issues with the ewes ovaries, ewes not in heat (due to sponge loss during the 12 day period between sponge insertion and sponge removal), ewes not in in heat due to problems removing the sponge – which happens in a very small number of cases, requiring veterinary assistance to remove the sponge. We also find a small number of cases of mastitis annually, these are very easy to find once ewes are placed into the AI cradles. All the above cases accounted for 14 ewes not being AI’d over the course of the 8 days of AI – 0.6% of ewes all sponged, which is very low.

CPT Ram usage

In total 28 rams were used to AI 2300 ewes which means an average ewe to ram ratio of 82. Not all rams mated this number of ewes however. Our aim is to mate each CPT ram with 100 ewes but there are a number of exceptions to this rule. The main one being the need to use ‘link rams’ from one year to another. These are rams which were involved in the CPT last year. We needed to use a 2014 CPT ram for each breed for this years programme. These rams do not need to be mated with 100 ewes as a smaller num

ber will provide us with the ‘linkage’ that we need.
We also used two Lleyn rams in this years programme. Our objective with the Lleyn breed at this moment in time is not the same as other breeds. For the main breeds we are attempting to highlight the very best maternal genetics available within each breed while also maintaining ‘linkage’ within the breed. The objective of using the two Lleyn rams this year was solely to help linkage only within the Lleyn breed, who as a society have been making steady progress with performance recording in recent years.

Sheep Ireland CPT Rams 2015

LambPlus Regional meeting reminder

The first meeting takes place next Wednesday in Mallow at 7:30pm and all pedigree breeders and farmers interested in breeding are invited.