Today we ultrasound scanned the lambs. The reason why we do this is to understand how much muscle and fat depth each animal has. This is important if you are breeding animals that Commercial Farmers will use to produce prime lambs for the food chain as it ensure that the right genetics are selected for breeding (ie more meat and less fat under the skin).

Our heaviest lamb weighed 66.5kg and he was born on 19th February but just because he is the heaviest it doesn’t mean he is the best. The breeding values that will be calculated on our animals will take into account rear type (single/twin or triplet), eight week weight, scan weight as well as the results from the scan itself.  This information will allow animals to be compared on a like for like basis.

It is interesting to me that the best animals are usually not the biggest as they can be born later and therefore could easily get overlooked. Imagine what would happen if you were to inadvertently sell (rather than breed from) your best animals just because they weren’t your biggest. Your genetic gain would be slower than it could be and this would have a big effect on your profitability!

It surprises me that more people don’t do more recording as we all know that the devil is in the detail! 

The picture above shows the raw data captured during Ultrasound scanning.

Next job will be to CT scan the best 8 ram lambs to do further analysis of their carcass attributes.