WHY OUR RAMS?

We believe, one of the most important traits in a modern merino breeding enterprise is producing animals that have had significant selection for carcass traits. Historically, this has been viewed as a less important trait in traditional merinos. Having this important trait moulds your ewes to be more resilient and allows them to bounce back after a tough time or raising multiple lambs. Using this as a selection tool helps in reducing ewe mortality and increases weaning rates which we believe is the most important trait. Surplus ewes and high marking percentages are key profit drivers in any sheep breeding business.

There is also the obvious lift in production and profitability. Lambs will have more muscle and finish faster and easier. This allows producers to take advantage of the increasing lamb market without compromising too much on wool traits if they were to switch to a crossbred operation.

We are currently selecting and breeding rams for above average eating quality and lean meat yield. This is being done by selecting sires with high IMF and Yield Breeding Values. Genomics is allowing us to select for this trait and increase our accuracy at the same time.

All progeny born in the stud are fleece weighed and tested for micron, SD, CV, comfort factor, length, strength and yield. These traits are all entered into Sheep Genetics Australia to form a ‘Breeding Value’ as these traits can be influenced greatly by their environment. Important visual aspects are also very important and are very difficult to measure. Some of these are crimp definition, colour and ability to handle high rainfall.

With the inception of using ‘Breeding Values’, this has allowed Old Cobran to select and identify high performing animals within our flock and allowing us to benchmark their performance against the Australian flock. These animals are not only high performers on single traits but are well balanced across all traits, which we find important to get to where you want to be. Using ASBV’s, provides us more information on each animal based on its performance (taking all the guess work out of it).

All breeding animals need to be structurally sound and ‘fit for purpose’. Having the correctness in their phenotype aids in longevity and performing basic survival tasks (walk, eat and reproduce). With our annual average rainfall seeing approximately 750mm, there is a constant environmental challenge and selection pressure on foot structure and health. Rams that don’t pass this test are culled.

From 2020, all sheep have been genomically tested. This gives us an opportunity to gain data very early on traits that are difficult to measure or even before the animal has had enough time to express its genetic potential, while also increasing the accuracy of traits that we have collected raw data from. From this we can make early decisions when mating ewe or ram lambs.

Genomic is very helpful to gain data on those “hard to measure traits” (IMF and Lean Meat Yield).

Old Cobran ceased mulesing in 2017. Up until then we were selectively tail-stripping ewe lambs that were needed. Our opinion is that to run a sustainable flock in our current and ever-changing environment we need to be focused on consumer demand. Running Merino sheep that are fit to be “non-mulesed” possesses many advantages; increased market demand and price for wool sales, decreased body/breech wrinkle, decreased wool covering over the face/head and improved lamb growth rates post marking. Breech wrinkle and breech cover are traits we still put heavy emphasis on at classing time to ensure we are making high genetic gain that will improve and transition your sheep to a non-mules flock. All ewe and ram lambs are given a breech score at lamb marking and then again at 10 months of age. This is then converted into a breeding value and will allow our clients to put different amounts of selection pressure on breech wrinkle to align their breeding objective.

Every ewe is pregnancy scanned and managed accordingly, with all dries being sold. Ewes are wet and dried at marking and any ewe that fails to rear is culled. Ewes and rams are selected for fertility traits by the use of ASBV’s, allowing an increase in genetic gain through each generation.