2024 Summer Feed Efficiency Test
4 2024 Animal Health Certification
The Maritime Beef Test Society is offering a 2024 Summer Ram Evaluation to be hosted in Nappan, Nova Scotia.
This Ram Test is designed to provide Canadian purebred and commercial sheep producers with the necessary tools to evaluate the genetic potential of their performance-tested ram(s) as breeding stock, while offering important information used to evaluate their own flock’s genetic improvement program. The information generated in a Ram Evaluation can improve the marketability of rams and provide valuable information used as a selection tools to increase a sheep flocks productivity and profitability.
Two Groups of Rams will be tested:
- Group 1: born March-April 2024
- Group 2: both January-February 2024
Traits to be evaluated during the 50-day spanning test period would include:
- Residual Feed Intake (RFI) – Feed intake and feed efficiency can vary over 20% in a flock posing as a significant cost in sheep production systems. Daily feed intake will be recorded to measure how efficiently each ram converts feed to product (e.g. kg gain). Feed efficiency will be calculated using a method (Residual Feed Intake) that assures that performance (daily weight gain and carcass merit) is not impacted, ensuring that breeders can select for rams that are both productive and efficient
- Average Daily Gain
- Carcass Ultrasound
- On-test Weight, 50-day weight, Adjusted 50-day weight and weight per day of age
- Breeding soundness (for rams in Group 2: born Jan-Feb 2024)
Ram Evaluation – Testimonial Video (from 2022)