LMY & EQ PDS – Monaro Site Facilitation

Summary

Lamb consumers are constantly demanding juicy, tender lamb which is full of flavour.  Processors are paying producers to produce a quality lamb carcass with high targets for lean meat yield (LMY) and dressing percentages.  To optimise profitability in their meat sheep enterprise, producers need to be able to accurately select terminal sires that will produce progeny which perform in these desirable traits ie. high lean meat yield carcasses, which still meet acceptable measurements for shear force (less than 40N shear force) and intramuscular fat (4-6% ). 
This project trialed, on-farm, the efficacy of research breeding values (RBVs) for lean meat yield (LMY) and eating quality.  It aimed to demonstrate that the RBVs for LMY, shear force (SF5) & intramuscular fat (IMF) can be translated through the lamb supply chain thereby enabling greater selection of sires based on these RBVs for these desirable traits.  It also aimed to validate research breeding values for LMY and EQ traits on-farm, in multiple different environments and through multiple supply chains.
​Data collected from these PDS was aggregated with data from other sites and analysed under the national coordination project, B.SCC.0144, to determine the value of RBVs for LMY and eating quality traits to ram breeders, lamb producers and processors.