Updates
What is SIL-ACE and what does it offer farmers?
September 8, 2011
SIL-ACE is New Zealand’s national sheep evaluation to identify the best rams for economic traits.
ACE is for Advanced Central Evaluation; Sheep Improvement Limited operates ACE – hence SIL-ACE.
SIL-ACE is able to make comparisons of rams across flocks, across breeds and across years. It does this by analysing and comparing the performance of the progeny of the same rams in different flocks and in different years. These genetic connections are generated by the Beef+Lamb New Zealand Central Progeny Test and industry breeding groups. SIL-ACE provides three major outputs for the New Zealand sheep industry:
- FlockFinder helps ram buyers locate flocks with genetic information on traits they want to improve
- RamFinder helps ram breeders locate individual rams with specific combinations of genetic merit for traits they specify
- Sire Leader Lists identify high genetic merit sires for a number of indexes and goal traits
_____________________________________________________________________________
THE LATEST THINKING FROM ABACUS BIO
Abacus Bio is the “genetic engine’ for Kelso, and leaders in genetic development for sheep in New Zealand. Abacus Bio’s Peter Fennessy works closely with Kelso, and following are some of his most recent observations. There is some really interesting stuff in here – please don’t hesitate to contact Matt Holden if there is anything you’d like to discuss further from this.