Genetic gain is dependent on several factors including selection intensity, accuracy of selection, and generation interval – put simply, making the right decision, more often, and more quickly. By increasing either selection intensity or selection accuracy and/or reducing generation interval, we can increase the rate of genetic gain. By altering one of the three factors, you can significantly improve the rate of your flock’s genetic gain.
For example, you can increase genetic gain across your flock by using young sires which are genotyped (reduced generation interval and increased accuracy of ASBVs) or doing an artificial breeding (AI or ET) program (increasing selection intensity).
There are several tools which you can use to increase your flock’s genetic gain and increase the production and profit for you and your clients. Some of these tools are briefly discussed below. More information on each of these can be found on the Sheep Genetics website.
The Sheep Genetics search site is a quick and easy way to find animals that meet your breeding objective. Using the Sheep Genetics search site, you can also access your ASBVs and indexes for your flock, view sale and semen catalogues, create pencards, save and export searches of animas which suit your breeding objective.
When using the search site, you can either search for individual animals or by criteria (i.e. young top index sires). You will need to choose which evaluation you want to search on and then select which traits you’re interested in – this will automatically default ASBVs of interest for you. If searching by criteria there are numerous parameters you can filter the search on including sex, birth year, currently for sale, genomics tested, progeny in reference flock, pedigree, location, as well as for ASBVs within specific ranges (for example, when searching for a potential sire to meet your SMART breeding objective).
More information on how to find a high performing animal that suits your breeding objective using the search site is available on the Sheep Genetics website.