William has been breeding pedigree Île De France, Texel and Suffolk sheep for over 30 years on his farm in County Kilkenny in the southeast of Ireland. The pedigree flock is run along with a 600 ewe Lambplus recorded flock of Easycare ewes, with all ewes lambing in March. The easycare ewes scanned with twin lambs are lambed outdoors. Ewes are fed a grass-based diet, the only concentrates used are fed to triplet rearing ewes and the lambs of ewe lambs.
William aims to produce top quality, hardy pedigree rams that will work well in commercial flocks, producing high quality fast growing lambs. This is achieved by selecting sires with good growth rates and muscle depth as well as following a strict culling policy.
The Texel and Suffolk flock was consistently ranked one or two for growth rate under the Department of Agriculture's LMI scheme and continues to produce Rams with 5 stars for Maternal and Terminal production in the Sheep Ireland lamb plus program. New Zeland genetics have been introduced to breed hardier more vigorous Texels and Suffolks.
Single Sire mating is practiced and lambs are Tagged at birth and recorded using an Agrident AWR 300. Lambs are scanned and weighed at weaning with only the very best retained to sell as Shearlings the following year. It is therefore vital for me to have as much information as possible and the software has given me the level of analysis that I need.
William says “I've been using Select Sheepware since 2013 and have found it to be a very valuable addition to the management of our sheep enterprise. All of the information for the Sheep Ireland LambPlus scheme is recorded in the Program and data exports to and imports from Sheep Ireland are straightforward. Replacements are Identified using a combination of both the Select Sheepware reports and the Sheep Ireland Stars ”