Sheep Ireland has started making contact with hill sheep breeding groups regarding their participation in the OviFlock project. The European Innovation Project (EIP), which was recently approved by the Department of Agriculture with funding of €650,000, aims to improve breeding in the hill sheep sector by identifying superior-performing sheep and establishing flockbooks.

Sheep Ireland’s Eamon Wall explains that the five-year project looks to build on significant level of hill sire genotyping that has taken place on Irish hill ram breeding flocks in recent years by genotyping female hill sheep.

“Through the targeted genotyping of these females, it will be possible to establish flockbooks (ancestry databases) for Ireland’s hill sheep population. There are numerous areas where improvements can be made.

“The sire genotyping carried out so far by hill breeders for the Sheep Improvement Scheme uncovered a huge number of inbreeding issues, which would have continued to go unnoticed in the absence of genotyping.”

Eamon says this same inbreeding risk exists within the female hill sheep population and establishing flockbooks will help to eliminate this issue.

“The establishment of flockbooks and performance recording will also allow data to be tracked across years, to develop a profile of superior-performing genetics. It will also differentiate rams produced from within the group from those sold by non-group members”.

Next steps

OviFlock proposes to visit all hill ram breeding flocks interested in genotyping a target number of their female hill sheep, thus helping to build a flockbook for their respective breed. Flock visits will be carried out over the five-year period, but the goal is to frontload as many of these as is practical in the early years of the project, to generate better momentum and faster progress.

The objective in year one is to genotype approximately 8,000 ewes, with flock visits coming on a first come, first served basis. A facility to submit an expression of interest will soon be available for breeders on www.sheep.ie. For a flock to be considered eligible, they must be an active breeder of their respective ram breeding group.

Costs of genotyping these sheep will be covered by the project. Each participating breeder will be allocated a set number of free genotypes, which can be used annually. This will be influenced by factors such as flock size, number of breeding rams sold, etc. There will also be a small financial benefit for participating groups that optimise the resources of the project.

Flock visits

During flock visits, OviFlock technicians will collect valuable data such as ewe ID, ewe age, ewe weight, body condition score, teeth/mouth quality scores, lameness scores, cases of mastitis, etc. “This data will be the most comprehensive bank of hill sheep data ever collected and will no doubt provide the potential for much more future work.”

Eamon highlights that a critical component of the project is for breeders to identify the ewes of potential saleable ram lambs in advance of breeding this year. It is these sheep that are of most interest for genotyping and failing to do so will leave such animals impossible to identify.

Eamon acknowledges that this may require a change of normal practice for some, but commented that the benefits obtained will far outweigh the task.