TROY Fischer has been using sheep performance indices on his family's Ashmore White Suffolk stud for 15 years and has watched as genetic gain has consistently improved the bottom line on his south-east South Australian-based stud.
This year, though, he has hit a windfall by breeding the highest ranking White Suffolk ram in Australia, outranking LAMBPLAN’s 20,000-head young White Suffolk catalogue.
The ram, Tag 080185, is valued at $116 on the LAMB 2020 index and is expected to sire lambs worth $8 more than the average due to its faster growth and muscling traits.
"ASBVs are about helping get more dollars in our pockets and our clients," says Mr Fischer, as sheep producers last week were given another tool to improve the profitability of their businesses, following the release of new gestation length and lambing ease ASBVs.
"Easy care animals mean more lambs and again this means more money," he says.
Nationwide, Sheep Genetics figures reveal there is a 33 per cent difference in lambing ease between the best and the worst terminal sires used in 2008.
Considering that research by Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) into the value of genetic improvement found that it added about $17.5 million to the farm gate value of the national lamb industry last year, another tool to assist producers make money is welcomed by breeders such as Mr Fischer.
He says incorporating the three new ASBVs, Lambing Ease Direct (LE_DIR), Lambing Ease Daughter (LE_DTR) and Gestation Length (GL) – which he has done for five years – helps boost lamb survival rates and the amount of lamb weaned per hectare.
Sheep Genetics manager Sam Gill said the adoption of ASBVs by sheep breeders had increased the profitability of sheep, but insisted there was more money to be made.
"As much as we are getting better at producing sheep we are far from perfect," he told Rural Press.
"Ram breeders have done a good job lifting the kilograms of lamb per head but there is still progress to be made on numbers of lambs weaned per hectare," he said, noting the new ASBVs would assist this.
The breeding values were created using over 44,500 records on ease of lambing collected by LAMBPLAN members, the Sheep CRC and research programs such University of New England’s Animal genetics and Breeding Unit.
Mr Gill said Lambing Ease Daughters ASBV indicated how well a sire's daughters would handle lambing and a sire with a high value for this would produce daughters that were less likely to require lambing assistance.
Gestation Length ASBV identified sires whose progeny would lamb down within optimal gestation length – from AI conception to the date of birth – to reduce birth weight and increase lambing ease.
The new ASBVs are available to terminal, maternal and Merino breeders through LAMBPLAN and MERINO SELECT.
At present Sheep Genetics are finalising information on carcase information – how they hang up as opposed to how measure when alive - intramuscular fat breeding values and eating quality.
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