Transcript
3 Baron-Hay Court, South Perth Western Australia 6151
Telephone: +61 (0)8 9368 3333 Fax: +61 (0)8 9474 2405
Email: enquiries@agric.wa.gov.au
Scene description
Meghan Cornelius from the Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia,
discusses the use of Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBVs) with sheep breeder
Lynley Anderson from Anderson Rams.
In this video
 Meghan Cornelius, Development Officer, Department of Agriculture and Food
Western Australia
 Lynley Anderson, Sheep Breeder, Kojonup, Western Australia
Transcript
Meghan: There’s a lot interest these days in Australian Sheep Breeding Values,
we've got producers talking more and more and wondering what it's all
about, and thinking more about objective measurement of the animals
rather than just the way they look. You guys have been doing a lot of
measurement for many years, and part of sheep genetics since the
beginning. What got you into it?
Lynley:
We started with objective measurement back in the sixties, after we
bought some rams and their progeny didn't match; they didn't resemble
the rams that we bought. So we started measuring the things that we
could, which were clean fleece weight micron and body weight to try and
breed some better sheep, because we couldn't rely on just buying a ram
that looked good and expecting it to make some improvements for us.
What we found was we made quite a bit improvement with objective
measurement but it wasn't enough because we found that we were
selecting for the early born singles because they weighed heavier at
yearling age. They cut more wool and they were finer than the twins, so
we were discounting the twins and the progeny from our maidens. So in
2002 when they started the pilot project for sheep genetics, we jumped at
the chance to do that.
And from that time we've been doing tagging at birth to record full
pedigree on the animals, and a birth weight and a birth date, and an awful
lot of measurements throughout their life; fleece measurements and
carcase traits.
Meghan: And you are focusing on a more dual-purpose sheep, aren't you, so you
are focusing on wool and meat traits?
Lynley:
Yeah, what we are trying to breed for is a robust, productive, easy care
fertile sheep. One of the traits that we really wanted to concentrate on was
worm resistance, so we could cut out drenching altogether and we've
done that.
Meghan: Very good. And it's something you're going to continue with into the
future?
Lynley:
Yes absolutely, I know they work, breeding values work and we've proven
that over thirteen years.
Meghan: If you had any advice for anyone thinking about starting objective
measurements, if they haven't been, what would you say?
Lynley:
Pick the key traits that are important to you and learn about them, just
look at them because there are breeding values for an awful lot of traits
and it can get confusing but just focus on the ones that are important for
your flock and the ones for the improvements that you want to make.
There's always an index if you choose an index that’s applicable to your
breeding and you use that or talk to your ram breeder who does breeding
values and let them help you choose rams that suit what you're trying to
achieve at home.
End of transcript