Ireland-Problems in the sheep industry.

IRELAND-PROBLEMS IN SHEEP INDUSTRY.

The Irish sheep industry is on its knees -- poor product prices, spiralling production costs, lack of scale and almost static improvements in the genetic efficiency over the past 30 years are taking their toll.

As sheep farmers exit the industry, one of the questions that I am often asked is: "Will there be a future in sheep for those who remain committed to the industry?"

I am aware that Ireland is a very different part of the world to New Zealand, but it is interesting to look at what happened over there in the 1980s when farming hit bad times. New Zealand sheep farmers have adapted their sheep breeds and management systems to enable them to build scale and produce sheep at a fraction of the cost of sheep production in Ireland. These improvements came about from improved management practices in addition to the use of improved genetics. Nowadays, only the minority of breeding rams in New Zealand are sold without performance recorded figures.

So what are the options for Irish sheep farmers? Up to this year, a small number of Irish sheep breeders have been participating in the Department of Agriculture’s Pedigree Sheep Breed Improvement Programme. This programme measured growth rate, muscle depth and back fat depth.

Unfortunately, participation in the scheme was limited to only a few terminal sire breeds and, with the exception of the Texel, breed participation in the scheme was generally around 10-15pc of the breed society members. Studies carried out by Teagasc and other research-based organisations in the UK have clearly shown the benefit of choosing rams that have high indexes for growth rate. In terms of back fat and muscle depth, the benefit is not as clear given the current payment structure for lamb in Ireland. This is the reason why, in the Lean Meat Index, the biggest weighting by far was given to growth rate.

Under John Malone’s (former Department of Agriculture Secretary) review of the Irish sheep industry, the task of further developing and running the Irish sheep breed improvement programme was transferred from the Department of Agriculture and Food to the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF). ICBF has already proved itself in the cattle field by producing the EBI and various beef indexes (star ratings) for both dairy and beef cattle in Ireland. It is now envisaged that, given the expertise that exists in this organisation, a sheep performance evaluation system can be developed using much of the expertise that is already present in the organisation.

So what will the new recording system mean to Irish sheep farmers?

Well, if we look at the current cattle system, we can see that by using top performing bulls (five-star) a farmer can increase profit per calf by €100 when compared to using a poor performing bull (one-star). It is expected that a similar degree of differential will be found in the sheep population.

So what is the new recording scheme called?

LambPlus.

How do people join?

Breeders who have participated in last year’s Pedigree Sheep Breed Improvement Programme will be invited to join this new initiative in the coming weeks. New breeders are also welcome to join and can get the appropriate forms from the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation, Highfield House, Shinagh, Bandon, Co Cork. Tel: 023 20222.

What traits will be measured?

There will be a menu of traits, and breeders can choose those that are relevant to their breed/flock. Growth rate (at a number of different stages), muscle debt and fat debt will be measured as per the LMI scheme. In addition, traits such as lamb mortality, lambing difficulty, foot problems, dagg scores, faecal egg counts and ewe mature weight are all options that breeders can choose to record.

How much does it cost to participate?

The cost of participation will depend on what traits a breeder chooses to record.

The base charge will be €60 per flock where information is submitted/received in electronic form. Additional charges will be incurred where breeders choose to submit/receive information by post and for items such as ultrasound scanning, faecal egg counts, DNA testing, etc.

Summary

A new era of recording has arrived for the Irish sheep farmers. Never before have farmers had the opportunity to record so many different traits. These traits are relevant to commercial sheep farmers and being able to select top performing sheep in the future will enable farmers to increase lamb performance and reduce input and labour costs.

It will take some time for the scheme to get up to full steam and ICBF expect that, as with all new initiatives, there will be some initial teething problems.

Therefore we will have to be patient for the first year as the new scheme gets off the ground. In the mean time, it is important that all ram breeders consider joining the scheme -- €60 is not a lot of money and the future of our sheep industry depends on selecting superior rams to leave the commercial sheep farmer more profit.

- Michael Gottstein