The forgotten facts
The future of sheep improvement
The future of sheep improvement
By Dr Clive Dalton
The forgotten facts
What really annoys me in all the discussion about how wonderful the importation of the exotic sheep breed was for the national sheep flock, is the lack of recognition of what was going on with sheep genetic improvement in New Zealand at
the time of the exotic importations.There was a tsunami of change racing ahead after all the years of work in the National Flock Recording Scheme (NFRS) starting in the 1960s, and then updated into Sheeplan starting in the 1970s. (See my blogs on Sheeplan).
The
changes that were taking place were massive, but nobody hyped up about
importing new breeds must have stopped to ask a basic questions – ‘hang on a
minute, before we get involved in all these importation shenanigans, let’s
check what our current breeds and breeders are doing, where they are at, and
where are they going?
By
the 1970s when I got involved with Sheeplan, a breeding revolution was going on
under our noses, and sheep improvement was going into orbit. Here are my ten good reasons why we
didn’t need the exotic breeds:
Coopworths -plenty of fertility |
The Romney was starting to
change at break neck speed too, as stud breeders had driven the breed
association into registering high performance commercial ewes in their flocks.
The ‘easy-care’ breeding policy drove out all the old short-legged, wool-blind 90% lambing sheep that needed full-time shepherding.
The photo shows Piquet Hill easy-care, high-performance Romneys that have also been selected for 30 years for Facial Eczema resistance.
The ‘easy-care’ breeding policy drove out all the old short-legged, wool-blind 90% lambing sheep that needed full-time shepherding.
The photo shows Piquet Hill easy-care, high-performance Romneys that have also been selected for 30 years for Facial Eczema resistance.
The Perendale was making
massive gains in fertility, meat and wool from hard hill country where the old
Romney couldn’t cope. They were on the 'fast track' of developing into a 'breed' to be established and improved through the National Flock Recording Scheme (NFRS) and Sheeplan, long before any exotic breeds were considered.
T There would be very few Perendale breeders who ever got involved with the exotics as they saw them as having little or no contribution to make on hard hill country.
T There would be very few Perendale breeders who ever got involved with the exotics as they saw them as having little or no contribution to make on hard hill country.
5. Group Breeding Schemes (GBS),
which started in the 1960s, blew the roof off all the old concepts of ‘stud’
breeding and registration of sheep based solely on pedigree. The performance levels of the sheep in
the GBS nucleus flocks for all the commercially important traits needed by NZ
farmers were unbelievable, and would have equaled and surpassed the exotics. And these were NZ-bred sheep and were being
rapidly fed through hundreds of thousands of commercial sheep flocks throughout
New Zealand.
6. The meat breeds were changing
at an unbelievable rate. The Poll
Dorset and Suffolk led the charge as they were increasing in popularity, but
the traditional Southdown and its mixtures (e.g. South Suffolk) was another
visual revolution. Meat production
was racing ahead.
7. We had the old Wallace
fertility flock at Ruakura, the Invermay high fertility flock which had
enormous potential, the Booroola from CSIRO in Australia and if we’d done more searching
among farmers’ flocks, we would have found sheep clearly with big genes for
fertility like the Wards at Raglan. These could have been sampled, multiplied
and commercialised, as they didn’t have all the things the Finn brought that we
didn’t want!
8. Better feeding and management driven
by the world’s best MAF advisory service allowed all these superior genes to be
expressed and measured in bank balances.
The hills were growing pastures they’d never seen before.
9. Hogget mating was a viable
option as nutrition had improved. The lack of fertility or growth genes never
restricted it.
1 AI and ET technology was well
advanced as the exotic importations had proved.
1 We had plenty of fertility,
plenty of growth and plenty of good wool in the sheep we knew that suited the
country’s long established and evolving markets. And improvement was on the move on ‘fast track’! (See my
blogs on Sheeplan).
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Dalton and Horton conclusions - the
future of sheep improvement?
Myformer MAF colleague Colin Horton and I had a yarn recently about sheep, performance recording, genetic improvement and the state of the 2014 industry. Colin was a top MAF Animal Husbandry Farm Advisory Officer and is now a private farm consultant with both New Zealand and international experience.
Myformer MAF colleague Colin Horton and I had a yarn recently about sheep, performance recording, genetic improvement and the state of the 2014 industry. Colin was a top MAF Animal Husbandry Farm Advisory Officer and is now a private farm consultant with both New Zealand and international experience.
Colin has a
special interest in genetics and animal breeding as he did his Masterate at
Massey on the subject under Prof Al Rae, before going into Farm Advisory work
for periods in Northland and the Waikato.
One of his major MAF roles was to upskill the former Sheep and Wool Officers, who then became Sheep and Beef Officers in animal genetics, so they could service the information needs of both stud breeders who recorded on Sheeplan, and their ram buying clients. It was no mean task, but the MAF staff in the field did a sterling job. They all eventually disappeared when charging for their services became the order of the day. It was a disaster but the bureaucrats called ‘progress’!
Our 2014 conclusions:
1. Agricultural science graduates can now complete a degree from Massey with little animal genetics skills, as they are not one of the ‘easier options’ needed to accrue credits to get a degree. So it’s easier to ditch the subject and do something of lower challenge as education costs are high and you can’t afford to repeat subjects.
2 2. In any case, most emphasis in general farm advisory
work is now on dairying where little breeding knowledge is needed, as the
Livestock Improvement Corporation does all genetics and animal breeding
extension. Farm advisors with Dairy NZ for example are
concerned with pasture and tend to give soils less emphasis which is the
territory of the fertiliser reps, while animal health is the sole territory of
veterinarians.
3 3. So there are no specialist sheep consultants anywhere
to help farmers in the sheepyards and woolsheds to interpret breeding
information they get from Sheep Improvement Ltd (SIL).
4 4. SIL being run by boffins may appreciate the needs of
breeders when they meet their ram clients, who have little or no knowledge of the
SIL information and find the layout of data far too complex, but they don’t
have staff to operate like Sheep and Beef Officers in every MAF district office.
5
5. No attempt has been made to change the layout of
selection lists from the old Sheeplan days when it was designed in the 1970s.
6 6. As the physical look of a ram has always, and will
always, reign supreme in the eyes of commercial sheep farmers, the need to
explain the importance of the increasingly sophisticated data on the SIL
Selection Lists has never been so important.
7 7. There is far too much information being produced, and
the SIL boffins can’t see this. The
more complex the data, the greater the urge for the ram buyers to escape to the
sheep yards and eyeball the sheep.
This will never change as long as ram buyers are human!
8 8. The low profitability of sheep farming (which is
advancing rapidly into the hard hill country due to dairy support) means that
sheep farmers never hire a farm consultant to help with any management of
breeding problems.
9 9. Technical help from Beef + Lamb NZ is sparse and
non-specialised and refer any technical breeding questions to SIL. Having information ‘on a website’ or calling
a 0800 number to leave a message is pathetic.
1 10 Stud breeding in
New Zealand is a ‘sunset’ business; in fact the sun has probably already set. Of all the commercial sheep farmers
still in serious business, probably only 40% bother to take any real interest
in selecting rams using SIL to make genetic improvement in their flocks. The rest now buy rams to get their ewes
pregnant and this is where the ‘composites’ fit in so easily.
1 11. Farmers are open
to advertising hype like never before, where ‘composites’ and ‘stabilised
crossbreds’ with guaranteed long-lasting ‘hybrid vigour’ are advertised as an
easy way to increased production, particularly more fertility which is assumed
to be profit).
1 12. Unlike in the
past, there is no independent organisation like the MAF Research and Advisory
services to test these claims. It looks as if any younger farmers carrying on
sheep farming are more prone to advertising hype than the current country
farmers (average age 60+) who cannot afford to leave the farm unless a dairy
grazier turns up at the gate with open cheque book.
1 13. Stud sheep
breeding and genetic improvement of the national flock is in a parlous state,
and nobody seems to be even interested or capable of doing anything about it.
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