Have we been breeding sheep backwards?

This article is bought to you by Glendemar MPM. 

Extracted from the Glendemar MPM Newsletter

By Nathan Scott - Achieve Ag Solutions

Just because something has been done a certain way, certainly doesn't mean it needs to continue. And that goes for breeding sheep as well. Let's think about our national flock, and what it is made up of. In the past, ewe numbers were dominated by merinos, with a sole focus of wool production. Cut more kilograms, and keep it fine. Makes perfect sense when wool is making good money.

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There was, and to a certain extend still is, one clear problem however. Our national flock was not based off good robust animals with high reproduction rates, great lamb survival, early growth, muscle and fat and plain body easy care sheep. It was wool, wool more wool and finer wool, which are the exact traits that are antagonistic with reproduction and lamb survival. Wool traits are visible, highly heritable (comparatively with other traits like reproduction) and therefore easily influenced. The historical approach was simple. Focus on the traits you can see and improve them. That narrow focus, however has progressively taken the industry down a path that we must now find our way back from.

We have the tools available to us today (Genomics, ASBV's etc) that those in the past didn't. With these tools, there is no excuse for breeding animals that don't offer the balance and robustness that a commercial sheep operation requires.

So, if we were to be starting from a clean slate, how would you design the breeding program for the national sheep flock. Would you aim for animals that cut more wool, at finer micron, and then hope for some miraculous improvement in reproduction and lamb survival?  Or would you design a robust animal that requires less maintenance, has high reproductive rates, and great lamb survival?

Remember that due to the higher heritability, and easily measurable wool traits, we can make more rapid progress on wool traits when we have the ability to apply selection pressure. The ability to apply selection pressure comes from numbers. High marking percentages, better lamb survival and ewe lamb joining's all allow for more selection pressure. It is my belief that we have been breeding sheep backwards for over 100 years. What we should be aiming to do is get the animal right as the highest priority, and then refine the wool traits. Your progress will be much faster, and your sheep operation more rewarding.

But it isn't just the merinos that have been bred backwards. Where have our first cross ewes come from? Generally, cull merino ewes. And they could be anything. How is that ever going to provide us with the best possible lamb flock? Don't get me wrong, I love the hybrid vigour, and I love the wool value offered by a first cross ewe. I just don't believe we are producing the best first cross ewes possible. So, what if we did it backwards? We now have clients joining a portion of their high-performance composite ewes, back to a high-performance merino ram with great muscle, fat, and growth to produce a first cross ewe. The absolute best of both worlds. You get more lambs per ewe, they grow faster than a traditional first cross lamb, giving you a better opportunity to join ewe lambs, have lower adult weights and the wethers will carry all of the meat-eating traits offered by intramuscular fat from the merino. Something that our industry will recognise in the years to come with a value-based payment system (meat eating quality and lean meat yield).

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The hybrid vigour offered by reintroducing merino into a composite situation is strong, and helps enormously in providing fast growing progeny. For our clients doing it already, the ewe lambs cut 23 micron wool, and scanned at 136%. I really believe that as an industry (and there are always exceptions), we have been breeding sheep backwards. Sometimes out of a lack of necessary tools and knowledge, and sometimes simply out of tradition and stubbornness. But just because we have, doesn't mean that we should. It is time for change. Be the future you want. Have we been breeding sheep backwards?