Client Reminders

With lambing round the corner for many terminal sire breeders, now is an important time to highlight the importance of recording both Birth Weights and Lambing Ease.

As we enter the autumn, and the weather is starting to turn and many of you will be thinking about preparing for the winter and getting jobs ticked off. Hopefully one near the top of the list is collecting weights of youngstock and cows. Providing weights for cows at weaning is important data, that will support on-going research and we hope lead to the development of an EBV for this trait.

Signet will be in attendance at all three major sheep events this summer, come and find us for a chat. Whether you are looking to record your flock or want to find out about the latest findings from the RamCompare project. 

Signets Sheepbreeder and Beefbreeder performance recording service allows breeders and buyers to identify those animals with the best genetics and make informed decisions. While providing breeders with tools to assist with the marketing of stock for sale at home and market sales.

AHDB are keen to support performance recording flocks based in England that wish to use SRUC’s CT scanning service.

AHDB will provide a support payment to SRUC of £55/lamb to support CT scanning services. Breeders can chose to take their lambs to Edinburgh or go to one of the mobile venues set up by SRUC. In 2023 AHDB are placing an additional criteria on breeders that wish to receive funding for CT scanning, which is that CT scanned lambs that are performance recorded with Signet must be genotyped (using a 50K genotype).

It is 7 years since Signet last changed the basic recording fees paid by members and over 12 years since we changed the fee for ultrasound scanning se ...

We recognise the importance of generating consistency in the monthly breeding values published by Signet.

While the ranking of animals will change as new data is added to the genetic evaluation, breeders generally wish to avoid changes that lead to their animals re-ranking - unless the index of their favourite ram goes up of course! However, as time moves on the team of geneticists at SRUC do make recommendations on ways to enhance our evaluations and if it is going to help breeders to make better breeding decisions, then we try to take their advice. 

Join Dr Nóirín McHugh from Teagasc as she talks about projects in Ireland that have set out to measure methane emissions in Irish sheep flocks. Together with Samuel Boon from AHDB they will discuss how selective breeding can be used to reduce methane emissions in the national flock and why genetic solutions are so important in enhancing this aspect of sheep production.

Over the winter we have updated every sheep report so that our reporting services can be accessed directly from the database, day and night. In most cases each report can be produced as either a pdf report or as csv/xls files. The great thing about online reporting is that it is:-

• More flexible - meaning you can get exactly the information that you want for any given report
• Always up to date – as reports are produced in real time.