RAM breeders will pay to advertise sale rams on the RamSelect site after August 1, in a Sheep CRC move toward a user pays model.

The Sheep CRC said from July, ram breeders who list their catalogues for sales scheduled from August 1 will be required to pay $3.50 per ram to advertise their animals on the site for a period of three months.

There will be no charges for ram buyers conducting on-line searches of catalogues listed on the RamSelect site and users will also be able to print lists of rams which meet their breeding objectives. However, users who wish to save their breeding objective, together with a sale list and their ram team information or genomic profiling information, will be required to become a registered user at a cost of $25 per year.

The move to a commercial funding model ahead of this season’s ram sales, is the first step toward ensuring the genetic selection tool’s financial viability and availability to producers in the long-term, the Sheep CRC said.

RamSelect Plus is an easy to use web-based application, www.ramselect.com.au, which allows ram buyers to find and rank rams based on Australian Sheep Breeding Values that match their own breeding objective.

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Sheep CRC chief executive James Rowe said for a catalogue of 100 rams the new charge equates to $350 for constant exposure over a three-month period, which he believes compares very favourably to other methods of advertising stud stock.

“Producers doing a Flock Profile DNA test will receive a free registration for 12 months so that they can store test results and adjust their rams searches based on this data to make more accurate and productive genetic selections,” Prof. Rowe said.

During the 2017 ram-buying season the Sheep CRC will work with its participants and other interested parties to develop a commercialisation plan for implementation in 2018 and beyond.

As the Sheep CRC’s principal industry funding partner, Meat & Livestock Australia was given the first opportunity to commercialise the app and secure its long-term future for industry.

“MLA has recently informed the Sheep CRC that they will not exercise their rights under Clause 24.4 of the Participants Agreement to commercialise RamSelect, and this means that we need to develop an alternative strategy for long-term sustainable delivery,” Prof. Rowe said.

The RamSelect app was first released in 2015 by the Sheep CRC. More than 15,000 rams from 186 stud catalogues were listed in the first year, jumping to 17,600 from 224 catalogues in 2016.

Ram buyers conducted more than 6300 ram searches during the 2016 ram sale season, and the volume of rams listed equates to approximately 10 percent of the national ram market, the Sheep CRC said.

“To continue to provide the RamSelect app to industry the Sheep CRC now needs to work with our Participants to develop a cost-recovery model to support its continued delivery and ongoing improvements, both in the short term and to put it on a secure financial footing for a long life after the CRC comes to an end in 2019,” Prof. Rowe said.

“As a result, this year the Sheep CRC will be conducting a pilot project to understand the willingness of breeders and producers to pay for the services provided by RamSelect and review a range of cost recovery options.”

More information is available at www.sheepcrc.com.au

Source: Sheep CRC.