RamSelect has empowered commercial Ram buyers by adding transparency to the market place

The advent of the online genetic selection tool RamSelect has empowered commercial ram buyers by adding transparency to the market place, according to Holbrook, NSW, sheep breeder Ian Ross.

Mr Ross (pictured) manages the 1800-hectare property “Aberfeldy” on behalf of the Melbourne-based Australian Agribusiness Group (AAG), which operates a series of farms on behalf of agriculture investors.

Mr Ross said that genetics had traditionally been marketed in three different ways – open auction, invitation to bid, and direct sale – with none dependent on presenting objective comparative data for the products being sold.

“I’m a passionate believer in fair pricing and RamSelect has busted the whole genetics market right open for me,” Mr Ross said. “RamSelect has transformed genetics from a commodity to a transparent market where I can easily assess and value rams.”

Ad - Take some of the risk out of Farming. Click here to contact SureSeason, they have an excellent Multi Peril Crop Insurance product - Ad

“Aberfeldy” carries 10,000 ewes run as a self-replacing maternal composite flock, split into three tiers of production: a high fertility composite multiplier flock joined to maternal rams, a secondary group joined to Terminal rams for prime lamb production, and culls which are sold off shears and preg-tested in lamb.

The flock was established six years ago and during that time Mr Ross has used Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBVs) and precision sheep management technologies – eID, preg-scanning and individual animal data analysis – to objectively track and improve the make-up of the flock.

Mr Ross started using RamSelect after being introduced to the program at LambEx in Albury in 2016 and immediately saw the opportunity to “tighten our direction” and focus genetic selection on specific growth and fertility traits such as number of lambs weaned.

“It’s like selecting a football team – if you want your team to put in a first grade performance, you need to select first grade players,” he said.

“I don’t get too hung up on too many traits but focus on just a couple that are most important to the business and we look for rams that are ranked in the top 2-3% for these criteria,” Mr Ross said. “$Indexes are a very good tool for doing this – simple and transparent. Some rams can deliver more than $20 per ewe mated per year than an average ram.

“We tend to leave those in the top 1% alone unless they are good value because of budget restraints, as they are normally higher value animals targeted by studs.”

Ad - Take some of the risk out of Farming. Click here to contact SureSeason, they have an excellent Multi Peril Crop Insurance product - Ad

Mr Ross selects the rams with the help of consultant Belinda Steers who provides assistance in the use of digital tools to analyse and benchmark flock performance, as well as genetic selection.

“Based on her analysis it’s really easy to auto-draft our ewes into their tiers based on objective measurements, and then compare those animals to the rams available on the market,” he said. “If our teams need a lift in a certain area then we can select rams that provide improvement in that trait – for example, we might target yearling number of lambs weaned (YNLW) or go for a curve-bender ram for stabilising adult ewe weight.

Ad - Take some of the risk out of Farming. Click here to contact SureSeason, they have an excellent Multi Peril Crop Insurance product - Ad 

“And it’s great fun to see how your team is performing against the industry average – depending on the decisions you make, you could add thousands of dollars to the value of your flock by making the right decision – particularly as genetic gains are accumulative.”

Mr Ross encouraged commercial buyers to ask their seedstock supplier to list their rams on RamSelect so that buyers could make a fair and objective comparison of the rams on the market.

• To find your local support provider for creating a RamSelect account and uploading ram team histories, contact Melanie Dowling melanie@dowlmanagribusiness.com or call (07) 4697 7653 / 0409 295 599.
• More information is available at www.ramselect.com.au.