ASBV's

MERINOSELECT ASBV

Sheep Genetics (SG) combines the main databases of Australian sheep breeds & is the largest and most comphrehensive accross flock sheep genetic benchmark in the world today. Lambplan provides data services for lamb industry & Merinoselect serves the wool and sheepmeat industry with significant overlap in carcase & disease traits which are common to both.

Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBV's) are the common genetic language used.

Ranking animals for different traits within the whole database is very important to successful selection & breeding. We can see if a sheep is in the top 10% of the breed (trait leader in blue) by looking at the percentile list.

Some breeders use an index to aid sheep selection. Following is an explanation of the currently available Merinoselect indexes.

Breech Wrinkle - EBWR

Early Breech Wrinkle (EBWR) and body wrinkle have an estimated heritability of 0.35, which is similar to body weight, staple strength and eye muscle depth. Environmental effects also have a significant effect on the expression of wrinkle, sometimes called ‘feed wrinkle’. For example;
twin born lambs are 0.3 to 0.5 score plainer than a single born lamb
maiden lambs are 0.2 to 0.3 score plainer than lambs from older ewes
drought lambs are 0.5 to 1.0 score plainer than lambs born in good feed conditions.
Accounting for these feed effects is one of the reasons why a Breech wrinkle ASBV has been developed. All Petali stud lambs are scored at lambmarking for Breech wrinkle. This is an ideal time to assess lambs & the development of the new ASBV is a very timely & valuable tool.