Could we breed a 'low carbon' sheep?

Since Robert Bakewell’s work in the 18th Century, selective breeding has become commonplace in agriculture, and new breeds of sheep have consistently emerged as a result. I’m involved with a group of farmers who are designing a better ewe – one that’s good for the environment as well as the bottom line.

The SIG group was formed by nine of us back in 2006. We wanted to reduce two of the highest input costs – wool production and disease control. With the help of Genesis Faraday  (now Bio-Science KTN), we devised a breeding programme, consolidating 3,500 ewes into the SIG breeding flock, all based on independent farms across Devon, Somerset and Wiltshire. 

We’ve got a robust data capture and in-house recording programme – essential to developing and delivering the programme. With all animals identified with electronic tags, data is captured and identified traits such as ease of lambing, milk availability at parturition, mothering ability, birth weight, lamb vigour are scored using a unique model – all traits identified as essential for the ewe to lamb outdoors without any assistance. Genetic linkage between individual members flocks, by the movement of rams around the farms, allows an across flock Sire Reference BLUP evaluation.

The livestock sector (and agriculture and land managament as a whole) has been asked to reduce carbon emissions by 11% by 2020. Looking through records of efficiencies, the dairy cow produces 16% less emissions for a tonne of product than it did twenty years ago. The chicken 25%. The pig 15%. It is the applied science that has produced these efficiencies.

Similar improvements in efficiency can be achieved by the sheep industry if full use of potential breeding and management tools is used. The Sheep Improved Genetics (SIG) programme intends to deliver breeding ewes with a 1-2% genetic improvement in efficiency year on year, which could deliver the required 11% improvement by 2020.

Grazed grass costs around 6.5p/kg of dry matter compared to silage costing around at 14p/kg of dry matter, and compound feeds costing over 20p/kg. Such figures highlight the blunt reality of the relative cheapness of grazing sheep. Selecting animals capable of maximising output from grass will help the industry achieve a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and improve profitability for the farmer.

The creation of a new breed is not a new concept – but tools are available now that make this task more achievable, and more powerful tools are arriving all the time. On the SIG project we’re continuing to make use of this modern technology to create a low input, more easily managed sheep: the Exlana.

 
Further information can be obtained from David Disney, Chairman, Sheep Improved Genetics Ltd at dd676@btconnect.com.

For more information see our beef & sheep factsheet.

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