The visual classing of sheep played a pivotal role in learnings of the selection process outcomes from the $13 million Merino Lifetime Productivity project.

The 10-year project (2015-2025) was designed to capture lifetime data from diverse environments, genetics and Merino types to better understand and deliver lifetime performance outcomes for the Australian Merino industry.

The MLP Results Seminar held on June 23 at the Burswood on Swan held presentations including how visual classing validated the project’s selection process.

Within the five MLP sites across Australian including at Pingelly, the total national ewe progeny from 134 industry sires were annually wool sampled, visually scored, fleece and body weighed, carcase scanned, faecal sampled and classed.

The first-cross ewes were joined to Merino sires from 18 months of age, and all reproduction data was recorded until they were five to six years of age.

At the seminar, Australian Merino Sire Evaluation Association executive officer Ben Swain said the project set out to improve all the selection tools including classing — “a valuable complementary tool”.

“In terms of accurate selection of the MLP sheep, classing at hogget stage was ideal — at this age is where we get the biggest production differences between the traits we are looking for,” he said.

“This is not to say that classing at post-weaning or yearling doesn’t add value, the classer can very easily, quickly, and cheaply take off the bottom sheep at an early stage.

“Early-age classing reliably identifies low-performing sheep, but classing at the hogget stage does a better job.”

Mr Swain said there was improved visual classing when sheep had more wool on them, which was a challenge for some production systems.

He said it was well known that annual ewe classing could add the benefit of improved fleece weight.

“Visual classing goes beyond the things we can’t have on a breeding value, including wool quality, skin type, structural integrity and more,” Mr Swain said.

“We can improve visual classing by giving the classer more information, including the reproduction performance of the sheep being classed — birth type, and rear type.”

Mr Swain said 25 per cent of all Australian commercial producers didn’t class their sheep.

“Visual classing is step one towards improving lifetime productivity, it’s a valuable low-costing and complementary tool to breeding value technology,” he said.

“Ideally, visual classing should be combined with Australian Sheep Breeding Value data or genomics for best results in selecting both visual and non-visual traits.

MLP project independent classer Nathan King said taking on the classing duties at Pingelly was a “great learning curve” and proved complementary to the performance data.

“As a WA classer working for a livestock company, 100 per cent of my clients have a breeding objective, but only 30 per cent can advise me if the sheep I am classing was single or twin born,” he said.

“The Merino has reduced a bit in wool cut, improved fertility greatly but we haven’t been able to measure in a dollar sense.

“Most producers want to know where their dollars are coming from.”