Dr Alex Ball at Lambex — flock profiling is a no-brainer.

COMMERCIAL sheep breeders were encouraged to do flock profiles to get a genetic benchmark and inform processors of the eating quality trait profile of their animals.

Rural Analytics director Dr Alex Ball told Lambex delegates in a breakfast seminar at the recent Adelaide conference that flock profiling allows breeders and producers to rank their flocks against others genetically, based on DNA tests from 20 animals per flock. Sheep Genetics’ flock profile product is currently only available for Merinos.

However, Dr Ball said in another couple of months there will be a flock profile for both maternal and terminal flocks as well.

“So if you’re a commercial breeder and you want to know where you sit in the big bad world, flock profiling is for you.”

For around $800-plus producers would get a genetic benchmark for their flock.

“It’s like carbon baselines; if you don’t know where your baseline is for genetics, don’t come whinging to me in two year’s time when people ask you questions about methane and other traits.

“So I would put methane and genomics in the same boat as doing measurements for carbon.”

Dr Ball said the other big project emerging is the new genomic breeding values coming out of AGBU and UNE.

“It’s going to take the genomic breeding values out of the single step run for Sheep Genetics and allow commercial breeders to access that same information.

“Maybe at a differential cost, that’s up to people to work out and maybe there will be a different set of traits, but again it is valuable tool and I’ll show why it’s important in a minute,” he said.

“That is coming out and you need to have that.”

Dr Ball said he really gets excited about flock profiling after seeing the results of the Lambex feedlot competition. The winning entries included many Merino and Merino cross entries selected for eating quality and carcase traits.

“That result told me that if I had a flock profile I could go to a processor in six months’ time – if I’ve got a Merino, terminal or composite sire flock – and tell that processor exactly where my lambs will sit with regards to eating quality and yield.

“For $800 every commercial breeder with 500 ewes and above should be doing that – it is a no-brainer.”