Five-family policy helps increase carcass weights

摘要

Selecting breeding rams from within the flock and basing selection on a series of performance criteria have helped Greenmount College, Northern Ireland, lift carcass weights in ram lambs from its Blackface flock by 1.4kg from 2004 to 2007. This dramatic shift in carcass weights comes as a result of a change from running the flock as two separate hefts to managing it on a five-family basis, reports Steven Johnston, senior beef and sheep technologist at Greenmount. "Moving to the family system has enabled the best performing homebred ram lambs from each family to be used across other families in the flock"