Hog and dairy producers have long benefited from extensive genetic records and databases that provide information to buyers seeking improved sires.
Sheep producers may be a little late arriving at the same game, but now a program jointly managed by the Quebec and Ontario agricultural ministries called GenOvis is offering them a leg up toward profitability.
Johanne Cameron, who has a 600-head flock in Quebec and works as a researcher for CEPOQ, the province’s centre for excellence in sheep production, told a meeting in Brandon Oct. 18 that a poor understanding of the complicated business of sheep genetics is the main reason why many sheep producers fail to achieve profitability.
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In Quebec, the problem was made worse by the fact that until a few years ago, subsidy payments were paid per ewe, giving producers no incentive to pay attention to prolificacy, the most important factor for success in the sheep business.
On many of the 1,000 or so farms in the province, a survey found that apart from about 75 purebred breeders, a large proportion of farmers had only a vague idea of the bloodlines they owned, with many ewes jokingly referred to as “F18s,” or eighteenth-generation crossbreds of virtually unknown origin.
Now, with subsidy payments based on the number of kilograms of lamb sold, producers are scrambling to improve their flock genetics, she said.
Lack of attention to breeding programs has resulted in lower numbers of lambs weaned and inconsistent carcass quality, she added, which eventually leads to poor returns and puts domestic producers at a disadvantage compared to low-cost imports of New Zealand lamb.
“There is no such thing as the perfect breed.”
Cameron said producers can produce heavy lambs with the carcass conformation that buyers want by using maternal prolific breeds such as Rideau Arcott and Romanov or non-prolific maternal breeds with excellent mothering characteristics such as Dorset and Polypay, with a terminal breed ram such as Suffolk.
“You must use a terminal sire on your maternal females to produce meat.”
In a flock of 400 head, using maternal breeds averaging 2.19 lambs weaned per year, rather than terminal ewes that average 1.6, amounts to an extra 236 lambs per year.
“So making a good choice can mean $23,600 of supplementary income per year,” she said.
Cameron said a common mistake is to use crossbred rams, which may look impressive but actually offer no improvement in growth traits and carcass conformation in their offspring.
On the other hand, F1 females can be used effectively as long as they are based on a cross between proven stock from a breed with good maternal instincts and one with extra prolificacy.
She said a common cross in Quebec is an F1 hybrid of Dorset and Romanov to create an animal with size, mothering ability, milk production and prolificacy.
For sheep producers who can’t afford to replace their existing ewes with top quality females, using a purebred terminal breed ram can improve the size and meat quality of their lamb crop in one generation.
Cameron used as an example the fictional Ti-Joe Farm, which starts off on a good footing with strong maternal genetics and a terminal sire but quickly begins to lose money by retaining terminal-maternal crossed female lambs in a misguided effort to quickly build flock numbers.
“The progeny of the ewe lambs have a good conformation, but he has less lambs born per female,” Cameron said.
“He thinks, ‘it’s normal, that’s ewe lambs for you.’ He’s right, for the moment.”
But not only does Ti-Joe eventually begin losing money from lower prolificacy, he begins to lose the homogeneity of his production because the lambs are not all alike and do not finish at the same weight.
The lack of carcass uniformity and quality cuts into his returns and eventually overall profitability slides.
“We should banish non-recognizable crossbred animals from Canada’s herd, or the F18s, as we call them in Quebec,” Cameron said.
“They create a vicious circle. A farmer has no money to buy good productive females, so he buys crossbred ewes, which give him low productivity, meaning he has less money, and it just goes on and on.”
She said breeders who participate in the GenOvis program are able to offer buyers the ability to pick the best animals for their particular requirements, especially average daily gains, back fat and expected progeny difference, which is a rating of the sire’s ability to transmit its characteristics to the lambs.
