Advancing sheep genetics – Audio
Making improvements to sheep genetics
David Thomas,
Professor, Department of Animal Science
UW-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
dlthomas@wisc.edu
Phone (608) 263-4306, (608) 263-4300
3:04 – Total Time
0:10 – Association that helps sheep owners make improvements
0:33 – How estimates of genetic value works
1:11 – Why this information is significant
1:31 – The role of UW-Madison in this association
2:11 – Changes expected in the sheep industry
2:45 – How to join program
2:56 – Lead out
TRANSCRIPT
Sevie Kenyon: Making improvements to the genetics of the sheep business were visiting today with David Thomas, Department of Animal Science University of Wisconsin Madison in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, and I’m Sevie Kenyon. David, there’s an association now that helps sheep producers make improvements can tell us what that is?
Dave Thomas: The National Sheep Improvement Program provides estimates of genetic value for economic import and trade such as reproduction, growth rate, wool production to producers of sheep so they can make more effective selection decisions when selecting breeding stock.
Sevie Kenyon: David, describe how that works for us.
Dave Thomas: The producers collect the data; they will record the number of lambs that an ewe gives birth to, the number of lambs that she weans, the weaning weights of those lambs, the post weaning weights of those lambs, fleece weights of the sheep and all that data is submitted electronically to the processing facility which happens to be in Australia. Australia has a much larger sheep population than we do, a lot better infrastructure and their willing to crunch the numbers for us, and that organization is called Lamb Plan and Lamb Plan then sends the estimated breeding values back to the producer.
Sevie Kenyon: And David what’s the significance to the sheep grower of this information?
Dave Thomas: It’s a much more accurate of the actual genetics of the animal than say just the weights that you’ve submitted. So you can make more accurate selection decisions and make progress at a faster rate in improving the productivity.
Sevie Kenyon: David can you give us an idea of what your role in this association is and that of UW-Madison.
Dave Thomas: UW has been involved for several years. I was chair of the technical committee that originally developed the National Sheep Improvement Program, and still serve on that technical committee. And then we have sheep producers within Wisconsin that serve on the board of directors. We’ve had a lot of involvement with this program over the years. Plus I would say that all of our pure bred sheep at the Arlington Ag Research station are in the program and we have some of the ram trait leaders within the breed because we’ve used this data over a very long period of time to make genetic improvement.
Sevie Kenyon: David, the program is recent, what kind of change would you expect between before and after in the sheep business.
Dave Thomas: The change that we hope will happen is that we’ll have more breeders get on the program so that we can make even more rapid genetic improvement in the sheep business. So far, we’re seeing a one to two percent improvement per year in the flocks that are on the program but what we need to have are more producers on the program so we can make more improvement in the entire U.S. flock.
Sevie Kenyon: If you’re interested in the program David where do you go, what do you do?
Dave Thomas: There is an excellent website just nsip.org that has all the information on enrollment.
Sevie Kenyon: We’ve been visiting with David Thomas, Department of Animal Science University of Wisconsin Madison in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, and I’m Sevie Kenyon.