NEW ZEALAND ROMNEY SHEEP

TRIGG Terminal Romney Improved Genetic Gain

The TRIGG sire reference progeny testing group was formed in 1998 by six of the North Islands leading Romney breeders in an innovative partnership to offer the best genetics from their performance recorded rams

The TRIGG group includes:

Performance recording is a key component in the TRIGG group's initiative to improve the genetic merit of it' s rams. The breeding values of all rams are recorded on Sheep Improvement Limited indexes (www.sheepimprovement.co.nz) enabling the group members to compare their rams against each other and against other breeders.

Adopting the model used by the dairy industry the group conducted sire referencing and progeny testing trials to identify the highest performing breeding stock in each members flock. The group called in the expertise of livestock genetics and animal production specialist, Professor Hugh Blair of the Institute of Veterinary, Animal & Biomedical Sciences and Associate Professor Roger Purchas of the Insitute of Food Nutrition & Human Health from Massey University to help achieve this goal.

TRIGG stands for Terminal Romneys for Increased Genetic Gain and the group members have pooled the superior genetics of their existing flocks to produce rams with proven performance, guaranteed to help boost the returns of their commercial farmer clients.

Adopting the model used by the dairy industry the group has been conducting sire referencing and progeny testing trials to identify the highest performing breeding stock in each of the members' flocks. The group has called in the expertise of livestock genetics and animal production specialists, Professor Hugh Blair and Dr Patricia Johnson of the Institute of Veterinary, Animal and Biomedical Sciences and Associate Professor Roger Purchas of the Institute of Food Nutrition and Human Health from Massey University. Professor Blair says identifying the top rams across all the farms and then widely using the top sires is the key to the success of this initiative. "The idea is to initially choose the best rams based on their six month liveweight and ultrasound measurements of eye muscle and also pedigree information, mate them to commercial ewes, and evaluate all progeny during growth and at slaughter. The "best" rams are chosen based on the results of analysis carried out on the carcases of their progeny and other information important for the profitability of commercial farmers, such as ewe efficiency." These top rams will then be mated to stud ewes on all the farms along with homebred rams, to produce a new crop of ram lambs. In subsequent years the same procedure will be used to select rams for progeny testing, and in the fourth year the rams available for selection will include the progeny from the "superior sires" selected in year two. The SIL system has been used for data recording and genetic evaluation. The top rams identified in the progeny test will be used over all properties to increase genetic linkage between the flocks and to allow a comparison of all sheep on TRIGG farms.