Performance Recording
| In every flock there are some sheep that consistently perform better than the rest. The purpose of performance recording is to increase the number of those high performing sheep, and so improve returns. |
Performance recording is designed to help breeders and producers improve the ability of their flocks to produce more lambs of the quality required by the market
It is basically a management tool to provide information to help producers make decisions on the stock to retain for breeding. It focuses on identifying the sheep which should consistently provide the most profit by ranking them in terms of their genetic potential.
The way in which an animal grows and develops is influenced by a number of factors - feeding, disease, climate and management (collectively called the environment) and its genetic merit. Only this last element - genetic potential - is passed on to the next generation. As sheep are kept in different environments selection by "eye" only can consequently be misleading.
The aim is to work out how much of each animal's performance is due to its genes and how much is because of the environment so that animals that are genetically superior for traits such as growth and muscle can be identified.
