Head Shepherd
Mark Ferguson from neXtgen Agri brings you the latest in livestock, genetics, innovation and technology. We focus on sheep and beef farming in Australia and New Zealand and the people doing great things in those industries.
Head Shepherd
Comparing New Zealand and Irish Sheep Genetics with Dr Noirin McHugh
No matter what country you visit, each will always say that they produce the best sheep. But, up until recently, we didn't have a fair comparison of sheep genetics between countries. That's where Teagasc, the Agriculture and Food Development Authority of Ireland, and our guest this week, Dr Noirin McHugh, come in.
Both Ireland and New Zealand have grass-based systems with an emphasis on export markets. In Ireland, their breeding objectives are similar to those in New Zealand, centring on lambing efficiency, growth performance, carcass quality, health and maternal traits. This makes it a great foundation for comparison of genetic merit.
"Back in 2012, we actually compared on paper our two indexes" explains Noirin. They wanted to see how the rate of genetic gain compared between Ireland and New Zealand. "New Zealand, because they had so much more data behind them, the rate of genetic gain or the rate of improvement due to genetics, was three times higher than what we saw here on the ground in Ireland," Noirin explains, with the Irish Maternal Sheep Index sitting at $0.50/lamb per year vs New Zealand at $2.60/lamb per year.
This led them to conduct a more controlled experiment, so that a true comparison could be made. In 2013 and 2014, 60 ewes were imported into Ireland from New Zealand. They were selected based on the Maternal Worth Index and selected from six different flocks.
A four-year controlled experiment commenced in 2015 at Teagasc. It compared the imported genetics, 'high' Irish genetics and 'low' Irish genetics. The results favoured New Zealand genetics in various aspects, including ewe survival, lamb numbers, ease of lambing and labour requirements. However, it did show that with Irish genetics, selecting the highest genetic merit animals can lead to substantial improvements in a short period of time.
Since that trial finished, Noirin has been involved with many other groundbreaking research trials in the sheep and beef field in Ireland and she tells Mark a little about these, too. From methane testing, to the differing methods and measures of lameness recording, to how Teagasc approach data collection to make it as easy as possible for their farmers.
The differing ways of recording data across countries is interesting, but it goes to show that the principles of genetics work the same worldwide and, that by selecting high-merit sheep with the traits you want, significant change can be made to your business.
Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited. We help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best: info@nextgenagri.com.
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Welcome to the Head Shepherd podcast. I'm your host, mark Ferguson, ceo at Next Gen Agri International, where we help livestock managers to get the best out of their stock. I want to take this opportunity to thank our friends at MSD Animal Health in Orflex for sponsoring Head Shepherd again this season, and I'm also excited to introduce our mates at Heinegger as brand new sponsors of the show. Msd in Orflex, or perhaps better known as Cooper's Animal Health in Australia, offer one of New Zealand, australia's, largest livestock product portfolios, with a comprehensive suite of animal health and management products connected through identification, traceability and monitoring solutions. Like us, they see how the wealth and breadth of information born out of this podcast can help their men and their farming clients achieve their mission of the science of healthier animals.
Mark Ferguson:Heinegger will need a little introduction to our audience. A market leader and one-stop shop for wool harvesting and animal fibre removal, together with an expanding range of agricultural products and inputs, the Heinegger name is synonymous with quality, reliability and precision. The Heinegger team have a deep understanding of livestock agriculture, backed by Swiss engineering and a family business dedicated to manufacturing the best. It's fantastic to have both of these sponsors supporting us and bringing Head Shepherd to each week, and now it's time to get on with this week's episode. Welcome back to Head Shepherd. This week we're off to Ireland and we welcome Dr Nori McHugh onto the show. Welcome, nori.
Noirin McHugh:Thanks, mark, thanks for helping me.
Mark Ferguson:I'm a beef and sheep geneticist there. I don't know how to pronounce that T-GASC or how to pronounce that, but obviously a research institution well known across the globe.
Noirin McHugh:Tagask yeah.
Mark Ferguson:Tagask, that's what I forgot. Excellent, they've done lots of work on genetics and you've just let me know that sheep's your passion, so we're in the good company. But yeah, obviously you've done lots of work across dairy beef and sheep predominantly there, and it's lots of variety of work across your career, so it's going to be good to have a chat through. We might just start with a bit of your background and sort of how you ended up where you are today.
Noirin McHugh:Yeah, so I hail from a small sheep farm by New Zealand standards anyway. Here in Ireland we had a bit of a stud flock as well, so a pedigree animal. So I've always had a passion for breeding and I did a degree in agriculture here in Ireland and it's part of that. I actually went to New Zealand and worked on some sheep farms over there, so that really instilled a big passion for me in breeding and I came back and completed my PhD here in Ireland, completed that in 2011. And I've been working as a geneticist on sheep and beef since. So primary role is to try and improve the national genetic evaluations here in Ireland for sheep and beef. So try and get new traits or update existing data to try and improve profitability and productivity for sheep and beef farms here in Ireland. Excellent.
Mark Ferguson:So, yeah, fantastic, fantastic background there to cover. So I guess, if we do dive straight in and do that comparison of breeding objectives between Ireland and New Zealand obviously both grass-based systems, I guess differences in some of the terrain and stuff but I'd be interested to hear, yeah I guess, how our breeding program would differ between New Zealand and Ireland.
Noirin McHugh:Yeah, so I suppose we've always been closely aligned to New Zealand in terms of our breeding objectives, as you mentioned. We're pretty similar in that, you know, grass-based systems heavily focused on our export markets, both here in Ireland and obviously in New Zealand as well. So we have some of the same key drivers of profitability in both systems. So, if we look at it, we have two breeding objectives here in Ireland, similar to what you have in New Zealand, so one focus on the maternal side and one focus on the terminal side, or animals going for slaughter, and within that we measure a lot of the same traits. So focus here heavily on lambing, because a lot of our animals lamb indoors, so we try and reduce labor around the point of lambing. Growth performance obviously is a big factor. Carcass, you know, trying to improve the quality of the carcasses and then health as well, along with maternal traits. So, very similar to what you probably are working with New Zealand, and you know we started looking at the similarities between ourselves and New Zealand, I think, back in 2012, where we actually compared on paper our two indexes and said, well, look, you know, if we compare them, what's the rate of genetic gain in New Zealand compared to what we have here in Ireland Now.
Noirin McHugh:At the time in Ireland our current breeding program was only really getting up and running from 2008 onwards.
Noirin McHugh:But when we looked at it we saw that New Zealand because they had so much more, or you, because they had so much more data behind you, your accuracies or you know, with the level of data you had behind those traits was a lot higher than what we have here in Ireland at the time, and we saw that your rate of genetic gain or your rate of improvement due to genetics was three times higher than what we saw here in the ground in Ireland.
Noirin McHugh:That was on paper, a purely paper exercise that we did with Abacus Bio actually in New Zealand at the time, and so, leaning on from that then we wanted to see well, look, let's test it on the ground, and so that led us to actually import New Zealand genetics in here to Ireland in 2012 and 2013. We focused on animals that are similar to the breed composition here in Ireland. So the two main breeds, even in our maternal flock here in Ireland are the Suffolk and Texel, with some maternal breeds in there as well, but heavily the commercial farmer here in Ireland selects a Texel or Suffolk cross, predominantly as the main yo within the flock. So we wanted to import the best, basically, that you had of those two breeds into Ireland and then to compare them to what we have here in the ground in Ireland to really test. Well, where are we in terms of our breeding program relative to New Zealand?
Mark Ferguson:Excellent. What did you say? Who won?
Noirin McHugh:Yeah. So we tested it over four years in a very controlled experiment, if you like. So what we did is we basically had three sub-blocks within us. We had the New Zealand, what we imported, we had the high Irish. So that was our genetically elite Irish of the Suffolk and Texel, the best animals that we could get from maternal traits. We also had a third group in there, which might seem surprising, which was the lowest of the Irish, what we call a one star animal here in Ireland, and what we were trying to do there was to show our Irish farmers that, look, if you select, even within the Irish population, select for the highest genetic merit animals possible and hopefully you'll see a genetic gain there on your flock. So it was really a validation Are the indexes actually delivering here in Ireland? Are we doing exactly what we say on the tin?
Noirin McHugh:So in terms of we carried that experiment out for four years the results were favorable for New Zealand. In some of the traits especially, we saw that there was greater yo survival, first of all in the New Zealand yo, so they were lasting longer than the equivalent Irish yo. They had a greater number of lambs born and reared, especially compared to our low Irish group less lambing difficulty, so less labor required from the New Zealand sheep. At lambing especially, we didn't see massive difference between them and that high Irish group in terms of the actual weight gain of our lambs. So they were pretty similar and the productivity the lifetime productivity over yo's were pretty similar across the high Irish and the New Zealand. But we did see big differences between the high Irish and New Zealand compared to low Irish, which was great news. Overall, what we would say from it is yet New Zealand definitely has something to offer.
Noirin McHugh:New Zealand yo's definitely have something to offer for Ireland. But some of the research is shown as well that you know, if we selected within Ireland and try to select our best genetics, you know we can make as big a genetic gain as what we are seeing in New Zealand. And I suppose the caveat for that is you know, our breeding program has developed a lot in the last number of years. We've introduced a crossbreed, so prior to that we were only looking at within breed, so only comparing a textile to a textile rather than being able to compare a textile, the best textile to the best silk, hook or whatever breed, and we also introduced genomic selection in 2020. So you know we've made pretty good gains. We actually seen our rate of genetic gain here in Ireland increasing fivefold over that period as well.
Mark Ferguson:Interesting stuff and it's good that you gave the Kiwis a chance by having that low group in there. Hopefully we can do the same in the World Cup. But I'm wondering why the farmers have what we would call terminal breeds. So Suffolk and textile are definitely, or predominantly, terminals. So certainly Suffolk and textiles obviously do a better both. But Interesting that there's no, I guess, what we would class as a true maternal which, and the benefit of that system here is keeping you mature weight down. Is that not a? That's not a priority. Obviously high carcass weight is a priority.
Noirin McHugh:Yeah, I suppose traditionally we would have selected bigger yoles because the the premises there are bigger yole, bigger lambs, you know, bigger carcasses. And now we have maternal breeds here in Ireland. So the Belclare is a composite breed that was bred by researchers here in Chagosk. They account for probably 15% of the yole population. So I suppose I should say you know that there is a good bit of maternal cross in with the textile and stuff, but traditionally they would have been the breeds of choice even for our yole population. Potentially we will hopefully within our indexes we are selecting for reduced yole mature weight on the maternal side so we're hoping we see that go down even within our terminal breeds.
Mark Ferguson:And so you see within, like you might have someone might be breeding, like two styles of rams, like it might be the same breed, but you've got a maternal focus ram and a terminal focus, obviously quite different breeding objectives. Is that what is evolving or are they different people often?
Noirin McHugh:Probably within the same flock you would have some that would have two yeah, the two that are maternal for breeding, the replacements and then the terminal. I suppose to remember here in Ireland our yole flock is a lot smaller than in New Zealand, so the average number of yoles per flock is 75. So in some cases they'll only throw out one ram or two rams with their entire yole flock and select probably the most maternal replacements out of that and Everton El's going for slaughter we would have. A lot of our maternal breeds would originate from the hill breeds here in Ireland on the harsher terrain and there's a good bit of crossing between that, the hill type yole and the terminal side. That will make it down into the lowlands as well.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, okay, cool. A quick interruption here to remind you of Head Ship at Premium and our consulting services at Next in Agri International. If you love this podcast and want to hear more of them, visit the hubnextinagricom and sign up for Head Ship at Premium and get an extra podcast each week. If you're listening to this and thinking you really do want to maximise the journey gain of your livestock and feel more confident around the decisions you're making on farm, then send me an email at mark at nextinagricom and we'll get in touch and see where that takes us.
Mark Ferguson:I guess, if we move on to some of the quick look through your publication list, which is pretty extensive you haven't been in the game that long and it's a fairly long list, which is awesome. One thing that was sort of frequently mentioned was sort of your efficiency or maybe that's just that my eyes are attracted to those words. But what's the strategy and I think you've done a fair bit of work of developing phenotypes and stuff what does your efficiency mean to you, I guess, or what does it mean to an Irish farmer?
Noirin McHugh:Yeah, I suppose there's so many different definitions. To me it's a yoke that can survive as long as possible and rear her lambs unassisted and get those lambs away to start as quick as possible. So I've done a good bit of work into are you better having that yoke that rear in a single, a big single that will get away to start as quick as possible, or are you better having a yoke that will rear multiples, potentially be lighter at weaning but she has more of them? All our research has shown a yoke that has multiples slightly lower weaning weights potentially. But if you look at it on the overall scale of things, she's going to leave you more profit at the end of the day when those lambs are actually sorted.
Noirin McHugh:So we've looked at how we define that efficiency trait and I think the main drivers for me is her own body weight, the litter size and what she's weaning the weaning weight of our litter that she's rearing as well. So they're three of the main ones we're looking at is your efficiency. To try and make it easier for Irish farmers to understand, we're trying to incorporate all that into the one index and that's what we have with our replacement or our maternal index. There's lots of other traits in there, but they're the three main drivers really behind it. If we look at the weighting within our maternal index, they're the three big ones litter size, or your own mature weight, and weaning weight. Lamb weaning weight or lamb day's disorder is what we call it in Ireland. So yeah, look, we're hopefully just starting a new experiment on that. Again, it's to prove to farmers that you don't need that big mass of you to deliver a big lamb, that potentially we can go for lighter yoes, have more of them on your flock and they will drive profitability in your flock.
Mark Ferguson:I guess with that flock size is the driver to keep things inside, because every lamb when you only got 75 years, every lamb matters a lot is Is that changing? Is the changes in Europe impacting? Are those flocks likely to increase in size or should get kicked outside? What do you say in the crystal ball for 10 years time?
Noirin McHugh:If we look at the old population within Ireland, it's been relatively steady or increasing over the last number of years. Now we probably will take a hit this year. The prices are slightly ahead of last year but they're still well back over. 2021 was a record year for us in terms of land price and profitability. We did see a big increase in number of years following that.
Noirin McHugh:If we look at it, you know, in Ireland is probably similar to what happened in New Zealand. Over the last 10 years. We have seen, you know, increased obviously profitability, especially in the dairy industry. It has expanded massively. Now, obviously, the environmental implications coming down the road or currently in place for dairy will potentially not see it expand as much as we thought, but sheep in Ireland will probably be pushed more towards the extent of hill type country in Ireland. So we probably will see flock size increasing because of that and I suppose it also highlights the importance of efficiency and the resilience of a yo for that climate as well, and that's something that we're really focusing on at the minute.
Noirin McHugh:I suppose when we look at our indexes here in Ireland, a lot of the information to date has been driven from the low land flocks. You know hill recording here in Ireland because there's such extensive flocks, it's been hard to get breeders to engage in that with the level of recording required to get genetic indexes behind them. Now genomic selection will definitely help us and there's a new project that's rolled out this year where we're trying to get animals genotype for the first time to get parentage information. You know, which is obviously the start of, you know, a breeding program to get that parentage information behind these animals. So hopefully what we'll see over the next number of years is that more hill animals will start to be recorded and get those genetic indexes and we can start to select, you know, for those efficiency traits on the area that we will probably see more of the sheep driven to in Ireland in the future.
Mark Ferguson:Interesting stuff, the like every genetics team around the world. At the moment, methane is on the agenda and greenhouse gas emissions are. You know there are a bit of a focus. I mean predominantly because that's where the funding is coming from, but also because it's important what's going on with there in Ireland in terms of methane selection.
Noirin McHugh:Yeah, so yeah, like you mentioned, it's the big buzzword in agriculture here in Ireland as well. You know Agriculture is the main sector when it comes to greenhouse gases here in Ireland. So, similar to New Zealand, there's a big emphasis on agriculture and reducing the level of emissions from the sector. Here in Ireland it's predominantly cattle based. You know sheep accounts for a small proportion of it about 10% but you know you know pressure will come on the sheep industry here in Ireland as well to start to deliver something in this area. So we have started an extensive program here within Chagos in conjunction with the National Breeding Program run by sheep Ireland over the last number of years in collecting methane phenotypes. So similar to what's done in New Zealand. We have the pack chambers or the portable accumulation chambers to measure sheep, so we measure 12 animals at a time. The trailer is mobile so we can go from flock to flock. 12 animals can be measured in the hour. So you know we're talking 72 animals at least measured a day so we can get big numbers quickly.
Noirin McHugh:So at the minute we have about just over 15,000 animals measured for methane here in Ireland across Hill and Lowland, and what we've done is we started to develop a breeding value for methane. We're probably going to develop two, one in the growing lamb and one in the yaw as well. The yaw methane breeding value has been available to sheep farmers this year to select on. Now it's not part of the indexes until, hopefully, next year, 2024, we will have both breeding values like I said, the growing animal and the yaw one incorporated into our indexes, both the maternal and the terminal side. So what we'll see is that you know, hopefully, that we can continue to improve efficiency and productivity on the Irish block but to try and reduce the level of methane emissions that's coming from the sheep industry. So roughly what we say is, yeah, sheep industry, like I said, a small proportion of the overall methane emissions, but it's the equivalent of an extra 200 and sorry, 225,000 dairy cows in the country. So it's not unsubstantial.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, interesting. One of the papers I read or didn't read I read the title of was the genetics of animal price, which is an interesting way to look at it, considering I guess we often obviously we try and add it all up into an index that adds to profitability, but I was intrigued about how you went about that and what you found in terms of trying to work out, because that presumably takes into account some random stuff that farmers look at when they put a price on animals.
Noirin McHugh:Yeah, absolutely so that was all to do with cattle. So I suppose mostly where we're coming at that from is you know an awful lot of the dairy animals or surplus dairy animals, dairy cross animals, are traded through our livestock march or livestock auctions here in Ireland and we really didn't have any information on those animals in the indexes. So you know, a dairy farmer obviously wants to get rid of these surplus calves as quick as possible but you know there's very little information recorded on them on the dairy side. You know, until really they get to the point of slaughter. Then we're seeing their carcass weight and their age of slaughter.
Noirin McHugh:But what we wanted to do is get a predictor of, you know, the value of that animal.
Noirin McHugh:You know in terms of its carcass value or its growth potential as early as possible. So we used calf price to try and get some predictor of the value of that animal at a young age as possible. So, like I said, a lot of the animals here in Ireland are traded through our livestock auctions or our march here. So that information was all collected into the National Breeding Program for our National Database here in Ireland. So we have information on the animal, the sire and dam obviously of that animal coming from the National Database, and then we have the information on its date at Burt the data was sold and the price it was sold. So really what we saw is that the calf price was a good predictor of the eventual value or the eventual profitability that could be generated from that animal in terms of the carcass rates. And what we saw is that we incorporated that into our dairy and beef indexes and obviously it had repercussions for the dairy industry, the dairy index and the beef component of our dairy index.
Mark Ferguson:There you go. The welfare is something we talk a lot about on Hedgeshepet and generally, and breeding particularly around how we breed sheep to improve welfare or improve health, which is the same thing. What are the couple of questions in that area? One is what are the focuses? I mean, what are the main? I'm assuming it's feet and internal pyrocytes, like it is here, but maybe there's other things. And then I did see a paper on infrared thermography as a tool to detect foot lesions. Just interested to see how that went.
Noirin McHugh:Yeah, welfare is a big component of the agricultural industry here in Ireland. That's been demanded similar probably to New Zealand by the eventual consumer of sheep or beef meat or cattle. So when we look at welfare, I suppose a big part of ours is looking at lambing difficulty around the birth of the animal as well as lamb survival or lamb mortality. So industry stats like I said, most of our yos, lamb indoors or the information we have we said that lamb mortality is running at about 8% to 10% on sheep flocks here in Ireland well, recorded sheep flocks here in Ireland. So there's definitely room for improvement in that if we talk about welfare. To start with and that's a key component of our index as well we get farmers to measure any dead lambs at birth so that we can get a handle on the lamb survival potential of any ram that's sold. Lambing difficulty is also measured. So we asked the farmer to tell us did they actually have to handle any of those yos in the shed and, if so, how much assistance did she need? We also measure lamb figure as well. So does the lamb get up straight away and suck or do you need to go in to the pen and help that lamb to suck. So that's a key component to start with in animal welfare. And then we do measure a lot of the traits, like you measured. So lameness is a key component of our index as well. Dag score as well is something we have looked at. We're penalized by our processors if our lambs are too daggy, so that's something as well as fly strike from a welfare point of view. We're also looking at mastitis here in Ireland to hopefully incorporate that into the index in the next number of years and, yeah, when it comes.
Noirin McHugh:You mentioned the infrared tomography. You know we ask our farmers if you, if you all the things I've talked about we ask our farmers to record a lot of information, you know, to try and get these indexes as accurately as possible. So we've tried to look at different ways of measuring them. You know that, you know, makes it more farmer friendly, I suppose, so that they don't have to, you know, go out with their pen and paper or their reader to to, you know, scan individual animals at certain times of the year.
Noirin McHugh:So we looked at the potential of using the infrared tomography cameras for this and it showed some promise, you know, in if you could keep the animal still, and that was the key part of it. If you could keep the animal still, you could get a very good image of the hoof and you could actually see if an animal was lame or not. Based on that, we also looked at using way crates as well. You know where we had the individual weights of the four hoofs to see.
Noirin McHugh:Again, could we use something like this to measure lameness on an animal? So you know, you know, was the weight being evenly distributed by a lame sheep? Obviously not compared to a healthy sheep or a sheep with with no signs of lameness. So again, there's some promise, promise in that and it definitely we could see. You know we could detect the lame sheep easily using that. So potentially, you know we're in the era of big technology there's ways and means that we could get this information and start incorporating it into our indexes in the future. And again, it's all to make life easier for the farmer that we're not asking them to record these huge amounts of data to help us to select the best genetic genetic animal or the best ram for a farmer in the future.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, 100% I think. Yeah, you're seeing him from my him sheet there in terms of tech and yeah, I guess it is an exciting time for us animal breeding types because we will get more and more phenotypes and more easily collected, obviously, and that's, that's good for the farmers and good for the information and obviously good for the animals if we can find ways to detect things earlier and less invasively. It's, it's all, it's all upside. Has there been much selection on? Is there a breeding way for any feed traits in Ireland?
Noirin McHugh:Yeah, so we have. We have a one for lameness in Ireland. So basically we did do a good bit of work on it, where we turned over individual sheep, scored the individual hoofs and we compared that to what, if we just asked the farmer to go through their flock and go, yeah, she's lame today, that goes them record her tie, rather than giving us information? You know on what, what extent was she lame? And you know what was the underlying issue behind that lameness? And we saw the, you know, from a genetics point of view, the heritability. So the proportion of variation or the proportion that we could expand that genetics was the same if we just asked the farmer you know, give us a quick look at your flock and give us a, you know, maybe a quick and dirty estimate of what you think, which of these you think are lame.
Noirin McHugh:So that's the trait that we measure now within the index. So a farmer can go, log on to their profile through Sheep Ireland, who are the body, national bodies that are responsible for genetic evaluations, and they can literally go into an individual animal and click yeah, she's lame today. And that information is all feeding in behind the genetic evaluations now. So again, when an individual breeder or farmer wants to go out and buy it, buy around. All that information is available. You know we have the overall indexes, you know the replacement and terminal index. But they can drill down. If they, you know, are focusing on lameness, lamb, survival or whatever the trait is, they can focus down to that level on that individual ram and say, yeah, look, he scores well or he is genetically superior for that trait and we'd select that from.
Mark Ferguson:That's intriguing that the heritability is the same. Is there the cause of lameness always what we were called over, or I've on into, digital dermatitis? Is it? Or is it? Is their foot rot, as in duck the back of the doses? Or and is there Abscesses to get food abscesses, or what are the? I guess? Are there lots of different ways shape can be like. Always the same way they can be?
Noirin McHugh:like no, there's lots of different ways she could be lame here in Ireland. You know, yeah, same abscesses, what rush could be, is probably the main cause of she playing the same early to be a heart, and you know that we did do a detailed study on that and look at the percentages and definitely, for that was the was the top and cause of lameness of the animals we measured and but, yeah, lots of lots of other different ways and I suppose, yeah, you know, ideally you would look at the individual cause, but you know there's a lot of work in that for an individual and farm to turn up the old one, look look at the individual who's and you know, from our point of view. You know, as a geneticist, I think we need more data. That's maybe not as clean or not as accurate, as you know. That's one where you go in and you're inspecting every individual who thought.
Noirin McHugh:You get a lot more data if you ask a farmer look, go out, go to your, your there and just tell us, just tell us which ones you think is lame or lame. We get a lot more information that way compared to going out and tell the farmer look, turn off all your your. Give us the individual causes of it. Lovely research to give us the individual causes, but if we get to the same end point, in that we can reduce lameness, true genetics and by selecting on just yet, is she lame or not, and then that's definitely the approach we take here in Ireland.
Mark Ferguson:Interesting. We're about to embark on a project in Australia where we are, while we're doing most of the turning up, but interested in in feed health generally or fit, yeah, I guess. Yeah, feed health across a range of range of aspects and, yeah, we will be looking at individuals. But it's just prompt me to make sure we score lameness at the same time so that if that, if we find the same as you did, that the same heritability then and can be combined to one lameness score, that's obviously makes makes a bit of sense. So it's been a timely chat on that front and well, definitely take that on, take that on board. I reckon that that pretty much covers it. I think we've. Is there anything else there that's exciting in sheep or beef in Ireland that we should talk about?
Noirin McHugh:Yeah, let me think I suppose me things the main thing we're looking at the minute Starting embark on parasite work as well, probably behind. We're behind the behind the deafness of that. So we're just starting. We've just started a project on that, on Scoring individual animals for fecal egg count and to try and to get trying to reading values for and for fecal egg count into our indexes as well. Anything else?
Mark Ferguson:Excellent, that's a definite. That's becoming a high priority, I assume.
Noirin McHugh:Drench resistances alive and well in Ireland, the same as it is here yeah, sure is sure, is, unfortunately, yeah, yeah, yeah, the biggest issue when we go out and met. You know most people are measuring it so they don't know. But you know the box we measure on which we think are clean, yeah, it's not a pretty picture.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, that seems to be the world I was. So, yeah, the quicker we get the animals more resistant or less susceptible to Internal parasites, the better will. Better will go. So, yeah, it's gonna be interesting. Where can the good thing about? I guess everywhere that has done it's not correlated with very much, and so you can move it quite quickly, which is which is always promising, and I think people probably underestimate how much game you can make quite quickly with that particular trait yeah.
Mark Ferguson:Excellent, that's been a fantastic chat, nor anything's very much for your time. I'll let you get on with your evening over there. It's it's no doubt getting late and yeah, we really appreciate jumping on head shepherd and Giving us those insights into, into your work and the goings on and in generic research there in Ireland.
Noirin McHugh:Perfect. Thanks for having me like it.
Mark Ferguson:Thanks, thank you. Thanks again to our mates and I know her proud world leaders in the manufacturing and supply professional sheep shearing and clipping equipment Understand that their customers rely on the quality and performance of the products each and every day. Also thanks to our friends at MSD animal health and all folks Management, all backed up by exceptional service. Both of these companies are wonderful supporters of the Australian and New Zealand livestock industries and we thank them for sponsoring the Hedgehog podcast.
