RamCompare ramps up: On-farm event to highlight merits of data recording

An event for commercial farmers looking to improve efficiency and reduce the cost of lamb production will take place later this summer at RamCompare’s Scotland farm with the support of Scotland’s red meat levy board, Quality Meat Scotland (QMS).

Innovative livestock enterprise, Saughland Farm, Midlothian, will host the RamCompare event which will involve a series of workshops covering everything from ram health to lamb grading, as well as disseminating some of the knowledge from the UK’s national progeny test, having completed its sixth year.

The joint levy-funded research project demonstrates how commercial producers can use specific estimated breeding values (EBVs) to identify rams with high genetic potential and prove their worth when assessing financial impact. Findings have revealed that differences in progeny values (worth £4–6/lamb) provide farmers with the opportunity, through careful ram selection, to enhance flock profitability by £1200–1500/ram over their working lifetime.

Highlighting the value of the project and upcoming on-farm event, Bruce McConachie, Head of Industry Development at QMS said:

“RamCompare has been an incredibly valuable data-collection project to date, and now it’s about translating that into financial terms. Previously a Monitor Farm, Saughland is an excellent example of a business adopting performance recording and productive sheep systems to improve their stock’s performance and output. I would highly encourage coming along to the event as Owen shares his knowledge and learnings thus far.”

Owen Gray, Saughland’s livestock manager commented: “Almost all our decisions are made from facts and figures, not guess work.

“We hope we are able to demonstrate the benefits of recording to wider agricultural communities, using data from Saughland’s commercial ewe flock and feeding it into RamCompare.”

More information and tickets to the event taking place on 15th September can be found at https://www.qmscotland.co.uk/ramcompare. For details and results from the RamCompare project, visit https://ahdb.org.uk/ramcompare-phase-iii.