The ram sale season is now kicking off around the country for all the breeds.
The Vendeen Premier sale took place in Roscommon on last Wednesday. According to Sheep Ireland an 80% clearance was achieved on the day. It hopes this positive demand will bode well for the many upcoming Premier sales over the coming weeks.
Over the weekend another sale took place for the Irish Charollais sheep society premier sale in Tullow, Co. Carlow.
The Sheep Ireland says the number of performance recorded entries in this sale was at its highest level ever, emphasising the major growth in performance recording breeders in the breed.
It says this rapid growth in performance recording breeders, has created some difficulties. With such a major influx of data from many new breeders, we are learning more about how the many different bloodlines are performing. This has inevitably caused movements in genetic Indices for many breeders.
This coupled with the structural changes to the Indices themselves has resulted major updates to the €uroStars that were provided to some breeders in 2013.
According to the Sheep Ireland the evaluations that it is providing to Charollais breeders in 2014 are better than last year. It says this is due to the fact that it is collecting far more data from many more different breeders.
The Sheep Ireland says while this large increase in data collection has caused movements in the Indices, the Indices that are now being displayed are more accurate – more accurate for the commercial farmer buying the ram.