In a coals to Newcastle story, Earnscleugh Merino Stud in Central Otago is selling semen to the much bigger Australian and South American merino industries.
Traditionally New Zealand studs import semen but thanks to 10 years of using Estimated Breeding Values (EBVs), Earnscleugh rams are now sought after around the world. Studmaster Alistair Campbell explains:
“We have had a big reversal. We are actually selling semen to Australia and South America now. People are ringing up. They do a search on the internet and an Earnscleugh ram comes up and next thing you’ve got an email coming through asking about a ram. Have you got semen available? We have the finest Merino Select ASBV ram in Australasia here and probably the highest index ultra fine ram. There is a lot of interest in them.”
EBVs indicate a sheep’s genetic merit for a specific trait. They allow a breeder to take the environment and the feed out of the equation so they can compare sheep between seasons on their property and between studs anywhere in the world. There are about 40 different breeding values. Micron, clean fleece weight and fertility are generally regarded as the most important values but there is an EBV for almost everything that can be measured.
“EBVs are first and foremost a way of organising the data so it puts every animal on a level playing field so you can then assess which is the best animal in your flock and also how that animal compares with an animal in anyone else’s flock. In the past you couldn’t do that. You’d look at a sheep in front of you and you’d say that one cut 5 kilos of wool and that one over there only cut 3 kilos but the difference was one was a late born twin and the other was an early born single. There is 30% difference in clean fleece weight between the first born single and the last born twin. It is nothing to do with genetics.”
Combined with a suitable selection index, EBVs can accelerate flock performance and progress towards the flock’s breeding objective. Earnscleugh has some very clearly defined goals for its various flocks:
• Ultra fine: get as fine as possible
• Super fines: reduce micron and increase weight
• Fines: hold micron and increase weight
• Polls: to wean in excess of 140% on a fast growing muscular heavy growing sheep that can provide Ice Breaker wool. Semen imported from one stud has averaged 145% lambs weaned for 17 or 18 years.
“Another poll sub flock we have coming through is incorporating Inverdale (fertility) Myomax and Loinmax (muscle) genes. We have had to do that with crossbreds obviously and we are flat out breeding back to merino again as fast as we can. Our aim with the polls is to get 20% more muscle. We aim to get 10% from our genetics ebv’s and 10% from those two muscle genes. It should allow them to fatten faster so you can send them to the works in autumn which you can’t do with most merinos now. You have to wait until spring. So if we can grow a merino fast and have a very long stapled wool on it that is a reasonable length as a lamb before it is killed the farmer is going to have wool and meat and the option to kill them in the autumn or the spring.”
Earnscleugh rams have not always performed so well. When Alistair first started using EBVs for his stud merinos 10 years ago, the findings were not good.
“When we got our first trend line here we were so far below the breed average we could hardly find ourselves on the graph. So we immediately did searches and looked for the top rams and now we are up in the top bracket within 10 years. It’s not pie in the sky stuff. Our commercial ewes are exactly tracking our trend line, 2 or 3 years behind. It is incredible how closely they are following. This is exactly what a geneticist will tell you will happen. We are clipping .6 kg more and 1.5 micron finer than we used to even through the drought years.”
As the first New Zealand merino stud to adopt EBVs, Earnscleugh had to educate clients to put value on this hard data.
“We are starting to attract the younger generation guys that are coming through and want realistic data. Now most of them wouldn’t buy the ram without taking notice of the breeding values. It’s very hard now in this stud to sell a ram that has got a below average breeding value.”
Few other New Zealand merino studs use EBVs—something Alistair has tried hard to change, with very little success. He predicts the change may be forced by commercial merino growers demanding hard data.
Alistair believes the resistance to change may be because studs are concerned that they may be shown up.
“But the reality is you don’t know until you’ve done your first run where your flock is going to sit in relation to other studs. In most instances there will be good and bad performing individuals. Once the breeder knows this, by using his own, or industry, top sires genetic progress is very rapid.”
Click here for more information on Earnscleugh
