Value of genetics shines through whatever your sheep farming system

RamCompare Farm Summary for 2025

There are big differences between the commercial farms that work with us as part of RamCompare. We have fast finishing systems using clover and clean grazing, farms the use creep feed to supplement forage and we have longer keep, grass based systems finishing lambs over the autumn.

Whatever the system, whatever the target weights and market for their lambs, this year’s results  shows the value of using high genetic merit sires shining through – whether this is through increasing carcase weight, enhancing conformation or reducing days to slaughter.

In the table below we summarised results, looking at the value of lambs (assuming national deadweight values for 2024) sired by the 3 highest and 3 lowest ranking sires on the basis of their genetic merit for abattoir traits.

In each case we see an increase in the financial value of the lambs sired by high index rams, to average ~£7/lamb (range £3.87 to £11.96).

Assuming that a terminal sire produces 160 saleable lambs over his working lifetime (and most are capable of producing many more) this would be worth an extra £1100/ram to the commercial user – simply from shopping around to buy the ram with the best genetics.

For more information - Selecting recorded rams for carcase traits | AHDB