Context

 

The rate of genetic gain within the Irish sheep industry is being hindered by the lack of known animal parentage and phenotypes (performance records) available on Irish commercial sheep farmers. Capturing phenotypes on animals with unknown ancestry has limited capacity to add long-term improvement to productivity. Only when parentage is known can the true power of these phenotypes be unlocked by linking and comparing the performance of entire bloodlines – through Ireland’s national sheep genetic evaluations.

Additional information

 

Expected results and practical recommendations from the OviData Project are:

• Increasing the rate of national genetic gain for the benefit of all Irish sheep farmers through the generation of high value phenotypes which can be used for the purpose of national genetic evaluations.

• Generation of approximately 15,000 sheep genotypes over the lifetime of OviData on highly informative commercial sheep which will unlock a huge range of valuable phenotypes for inclusion in the national sheep genetic evaluations.

• Generation of health phenotypes of use for genetic evaluation on all participating animals which will serve to build and maintain a new health genetic index for Irish sheep farmers, leading to a long term sustainable strategy to reduce key health issues namely lameness, dagginess and mastitis.

• Generation of large quantities of carcase records which are of use for genetic evaluation as a result of known parentage.

• Development and testing of an alternative model for large scale parentage assignment and phenotype collection for other Irish commercial farmers in the future.

• Development of standard phenotype collection protocols for health and longevity traits and subsequent training of data collection technicians and participating farmers.