There is no doubt that visual assessment of an animal before purchase is an important skill for the sheep breeder. The teeth, the feet and legs, and the breed type all need to be assessed. However, buying sheep by eye alone is a real gamble. Is the animal well grown due to feeding or breeding? Maybe it has greater scale because it was out of a single or had preferential treatment? How can you assess milkiness, mothering ability and prolificacy by looking at a ram? What is the conformation of the animal like under all that wool?

Buying recorded stock gives you the ability to base selection decisions on objective criteria such as growth rate, carcass characteristics and maternal attributes. You will therefore have considerably more confidence that the animal you have selected will be able to do the job you want it to do.

So what is the financial impact of using recorded stock? Well as a rule of thumb, most studies suggest that an additional £2 to £4 per animal can be generated using high index recorded stock. However, the higher the index of the animals used the higher this figure is likely to be.

Typical benefits of high index sheep:

Growth rate: in many of the breeding groups animals in the top 10% are approximately 4kg heavier at 21 weeks of age; with terminal sire breeds this maybe as much as 10kg.

Carcass: EBVs of +3mm eye muscle, without extra fat are achieved with high index animals in many breeds.

Mothering ability: in some breeds top 10% animals produce lambs around 1kg heavier at eight weeks of age due to improved milkiness and mothering ability.

More detailed information about the figures for animals in each breeding group can be found by selecting your breed of interest here.