Semen and embryos raise funds for RHET

Society Matters Kirree judges at Paris Show

Isle of Man-based Texel breeder Kirree Kermode had the honour of judging the Texel classes at February’s Salon International de l’Agriculture (Paris Show), following in the footsteps of a number of UK breeders who have adjudicated in Paris in previous years.

Kiree, who’s family run the Orrisdale flock, is a member of the Society’s YDP committee and judged the Paris event alongside Sylvie Merre, the granddaughter of the first importer of Texels to France.

Names for 2020 born lambs begin with the letter… D

Society Matters Invoices by email

Members are reminded that from September the Society has been issuing all invoices by email.

Could all members please ensure that the Society has an up to date email address and also remember to mark Society email addresses as safe senders in their email accounts.

Obituaries

The Society was informed of the loss of some dear members and friends.

DAVID CORFIELD - formerly Fordwell flock - November 2019

DAVID PRINCE - Stonedge - January 2020

DESMOND ROONEY - Mountain View - February 2020 KATHLYN FORSYTH - Glenside - March 2020

MARJORIE LOGNDIN - Wellingly - April 2020

Society Matters

Semen and embryos raise more than £7000 for RHET

Top Texel genetics were among the star lots in a charity auction staged as part of the Royal Highland Educational Trust’s 21st anniversary celebration.

The auction to raise funds to continue RHET’s work in providing free educational activities and experiential learning opportunities linked to Curriculum for Excellence, raised more than £90,000, with more than £7000 of this coming from five lots of Texel semen and embryos.

A total of 10 doses of semen from the 100,000gns Sportsman’s Batman donated by Procters Farm raised £2300, with a package of six doses selling for £1500 and four making £800.

The Blackwood family’s Auldhouseburn flock also donated semen, giving 10 doses of the £125,000 Rhaeadr Best of the Best. This grossed £2470, with one lot of six making £1720 and a further four selling for £750.

In addition, Gordon Gray and family’s Ettrick flock donated four frozen grade one embryos by Brackenridge Commander and out of one of their best Yuga Khan daughters, with all shipping costs being kindly covered by AB Europe. This package sold for £2550.

Society Matters

iTexel - printed pedigree certificates

The Society no longer provides pedigree certificates to members. The status of sheep in flocks can be viewed and changed via iTexel. EU Zootechnological standard certificates for use when exporting can be printed from iTexel by members.

A new function will be released on iTexel later this year to support members transferring sheep between members. This will remove the need to prove new ownership to the Society, other than for those members that have not moved to iTexel online services.

However, ram registration will still require proof of new ownership and DNA sampling for full registration. Contact the Society office for ram registrations before October each year for the most cost-effective fees.

Dear Texelplus member

2020 Texelplus services

As you will already be aware there are several enhancements to texelplus this year; the first and most important of which is the introduction of the Society’s new iTexel database. The new cloud-based database is being been rolled out over a 15-month period between April 2019 and June 2020. With further enhancements to benefit member services expected in future. On a practical level texelplus members will need to use iTexel for all data submission this year, including uploading eight week weights for those flocks which have yet to do so. In addition, there is a limited ultrasound scanning service available at the present time, with AHDB scanning technicians only operating within a 125 mile radius of their home addresses. Private ultrasound providers will have made their own risk assessment and decisions and breeders are advised to contact their service providers for more information.

Those flocks that do undertake ultrasound scanning will have their scan data uploaded by the Society as part of their collaboration with the ultrasound scanning operatives.

Where members are unable to or choose not to undertake ultrasound scanning they are asked to provide scan weight information to the Society, again this will be easily carried out via the iTexel weight recording screen. The advice is to weigh your lambs between 18 and 21 weeks of age. For early February lambing flocks this will be in the first to third weeks of June.

“The last date for data submission for inclusion within the first evaluation available from iTexel is 17th June.”

Likewise, SRUC have also suspended their CT Scanning services due to Covid-19 restrictions. Additionally, and for the same reasons, the Society took the decision in March not to collect mastitis and footrot data this year but is able to double up next year to ensure records are maintained.

Evaluation flock reports and publishing of EBVs Breeders will notice the new style layout of EBVs on iTexel, giving Texel breeders and their customers fingertip access by smartphone to easy-to-decipher breeding values and rankings on the iTexel animal search. The iTexel breeder search also clearly identifies all participating texelplus breeders with the texelplus logo.

Impact of the Society’s high profile and industry leading R&D programme Importantly, the significant investment and vision the Society has with breed development and its R&D programme, has supported the creation of new, innovative and commercially derived EBVs. These include EBVs for VIA traits, informed by slaughter lamb derived data, having worked closely with commercial producers and large-scale processors. Genomic breeding values are also being considered for mastitis and footrot. These have been developed over five years of activity with some texelplus flocks and SRUC leading to the creation of the Society’s Phenotype Farm structure.

All of this is supported by the Society’s unique genomic reference population which now has more than 10,000 genotypes and a significant volume of hard-to-measure phenotypic data fuelling the evaluations.

The introduction of these novel breeding values and technology places the Society and texelplus breeders in a progressive position. The Texel Society will be the first in the UK to provide its breeders with routine genomic breeding values and they are eagerly anticipated following years of investment and development. A challenging initative with the roll out expected this year.

Future developments

To sustain VIA EBVs the Society contracts with commercial producers to produce slaughter lambs from known sires. This allows a central progeny test structure at a pilot level as part of the exploitation of the Society’s VIA research project. The Society will expand this scheme to increase the number of slaughter lambs generated from known sires over the coming years, increasing their accuracy and benefiting those that will become reliant. And, finally, once normal service can be resumed following the relaxation of the Covid-19 restrictions, the Society through its Breed Development committee has a host of new developments that it is considering, more information will follow later in the year.

John Yates Chief Executive

Key actions and dates for

Action

Add eight-week weights

Add scan weights* (18-21 weeks of age) Flock reports available

in 2020

When

Now

June onwards

End of June

How

Weight entry functionality available on iTexel

via iTexel.uk