DNA testing has taken the guesswork out of breeding for Victorian sheep mixed farmer Todd Martin who now has a clear picture of how his flock compares to the rest of the industry and of the decisions he needs to make to improve its performance.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Mr Martin was a participant in a pilot trial of the DNA Flock Profile Test conducted last year by the Cooperative Research Centre for Sheep Industry Innovation (Sheep CRC).
The test provided Mr Martin with the affirmation that his flock improvement strategy was going in the right direction and how to adjust his decision-making to stretch his production even further.
Mr Martin, of Durham Ox south of Kerang, said his family undertook DNA flock profiling to find out the success of its breeding program and to help it through the RamSelect Plus program to “assess the potential impact of various options for ram purchases on the improvement of our flock.”
“We found it was a really good way to get some objective information to tell us if we were on the right track or not and it showed that there are still areas that we need to work on and that was exactly the point of taking the test,” he said.
The Sheep CRC’s DNA Flock Profile Test involves randomly sampling 20 young ewes for DNA testing, with genetic links then identified with animals of known breeding values from the Information Nucleus database.
These linkages support a prediction of the flock's average breeding values, which are then scaled to Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBVs) for major Merino traits, such as yearling weight, fleece weight and fibre diameter.
They are also used to produce indices for Fibre Production, Merino Production and Dual Purpose.
