It’s been a hectic couple of weeks at Felix Rams, as it always is at joining time.
This year we have used four 2015-drop Poll Dorset ram lambs and four 2015-drop White Suffolk ram lambs, along with four adult Poll Dorset rams – a total of 12 individual sire joining paddocks. We have also artificially inseminated 118 Poll Dorset ewes and 80 White Suffolk ewes, and collected embryos from 4 Poll Dorset ewes.
Unfortunately, the embryo transfer program wasn’t overly successful – only implanting 10 embryos. A real disappointment, as these ewes represent the best opportunity for us to breed outstanding performance progeny to use in the flock next year. Two of the Poll Dorset ram lambs we used this year were out of our ET program last year.
The average of our home-bred sires for 2016 is pretty impressive: 0.30 for BWT, +17 for PWT and 3.1 for PEMD, combined with outstanding eating quality, with the team averaging 0.01 for IMF. All these rams have been DNA tested for eating quality and lean meat yield, and have also had their sire pedigree verified by DNA. Part of our commitment to providing the best quality data for the Sheep Genetics Lambplan analysis.
The sires used for our Poll Dorset AI program were selected to provide outcross genetics, and while each was individually challenged on a particular trait, they provided a very useful sire team when matched to ewes.