Digital breeding values integrated directly into online stud sales
Farmers can now access digital sheep breeding values in one place for stud sales, with hopes cattle breeding values will be available soon.
An online sale for maternal shedding composite rams will be the first host for digital breeding values.
Monday will mark the first day for digital Australian Sheep Breeding Values to be integrated into an AuctionsPlus sale, for Low Footprint Lamb’s maternal shedding composite rams.
The ASBVs now show over each lot and include references for their percentile placement for the breed overall. It shows ASBV highlights, selection indexes, growth, carcass and eating quality data among others.
The platform uses Sheep Genetics to gather the data for online stud listings.
AuctionsPlus product owner and producer George Shannon also works on his family farm at Bookham, NSW, and said it would make buying information much easier for online bidders.
“You can use it to get out of the spreadsheet and just stay in the one spot, it’s powered by Sheep Genetics so it’s easy to use and accurate,” he said.
“It gives you it all in one space. As a buyer it’s so helpful and that’s what drove this.”
Meat and Livestock Australia sheep genetics manager and producer Peta Bradley said it was crucial to better display genetic information and tie it in with stock purchasing.
“From a producer side of things, being able to access data that’s presented in a very similar way which helps understanding genetic information to make more-informed decisions,” she said.
Meanwhile, AuctionsPlus business development manager and analyst Oliver Hoare said the organisation would love to introduce it into cattle sales.
“We’d be able to work with different breed societies and service providers in the cattle space, to be able to show Estimated Breeding Values,” he said.
“It’s definitely something we’re looking at, the next stage of this project … It really adds a lot of context to the sales.”
