Press release

Farming Connect Article - Finding the most profitable ram

The greatest challenge when ram buyers are selecting rams to breed female replacements is that many of the important traits can’t be assessed simply by looking at the ram. To identify those rams whose daughters will lamb easily and rear a heavy pair of twins each year, you need to record the performance of the flock and select breeding lines that excel for future breeding.

This is exactly the philosophy at High Country Romney, where over 12,000 sheep have been performance recorded with Signet and SIL on a commercial, grass based system to identify those sheep with the most profitable genetics.

Short update for Terminal Sire breeders about the planned changes that have now been implemented to the Terminal Sire Evaluation

RamCompare, the UK’s national progeny testing initiative, is seeking new commercial farms to join the project this season across England and Wales.

The RamCompare project is celebrating its tenth year in 2025 and is seeking new rams to join this year’s breeding season.

After consulting with our stakeholders, we have decided to adjust our deadline dates from April 2025 to better meet the needs of various breeds. The new deadlines are as follows:

• Terminal Sire Evaluations – Deadline is the 1st Tuesday of the month
• Hill Evaluation – Deadline is the 3rd Tuesday of the month
• Maternal Evaluation – Deadline remains unchanged on the 4th Tuesday of the month

Signet are planning to update the breeding indexes we use in our genetic evaluation of terminal sire breeds. This AHDB funded research will be delivered by AGBU, the Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit, University of New England, Australia. Research fellow Gus Rose will lead the work, supported by an internationally recognised team.

As part of this work, Gus is heading to the UK to talk to Signet clients about the ways they use the service and what their clients require. To support this engagement a series of meetings are being organised in the lead up to the Sheep Breeders Roundtable in November. It would be great if you could join us.

Signet are pleased to announce that we have enhanced the genetic evaluation that we deliver to Sussex cattle breeders through the inclusion of 18,000 additional pedigree records which the Society has provided for cattle born since 2000.

A collaborative research team has been awarded a £1.1million grant to tackle the devastating impact of Maedi-visna (MV), a chronic infectious disease affecting sheep and goats.

RamCompare is on the look-out for new farms to recruit across England and Wales. The project collects data from birth to slaughter from commercial UK farms. RamCompare host farms provide a minimum of 300 ewes which are mated to performance recorded terminal sires. All flock data is collected using electronic identification (EID) and all commercial lambs are reared as one management group within a fast-finishing system.

To support ram breeders in 2024 the index will be rescaled to better reflect the variation within the population, whilst operating from a higher initial starting point. The ranking of rams will not change, but the average index within each breed will be closer to £10 than the current starting point of £1.