Breeding Philosophy
We are proud to combine phenotype and genotype when breeding a modern Merino and believe it is essential for producing animals that have both desirable physical traits and superior genetics.
The result is an increase in the productivity and profitability of the genetics we sell, whilst retaining the essential traits of conformation, type and structure.
At Haddon Rig, our focus is on improving our clients’ profitability by breeding rams with superior fertility, early maturity, high-quality wool, and strong carcass traits. Our core strength lies in striking the right balance between these traits, ensuring well-rounded animals without sacrificing structure or wool cut.
GENETIC VISION
As we continue to finetune and incorporate ASBVs into our breeding program and improve our accuracies, a core focus will be improving the fly strike resistance scores of the sheep with Early Breech Cover (EBCOV) and Early Breech Wrinkle (EBWR). We are making rapid progress on these with our breech and wrinkle scoring at marking. At the same time, we will carefully increase the selection pressure on condition scores (Yearling Eye Muscle Depth and Yearling Fat) to improve whole body body energy and drought resilience without losing the wool type and correctness our sheep are known for.
We are excited to continue developing balanced, well-rounded Merinos and Poll Merinos, focussed on profitability and ongoing performance. With strong growth traits, heavy-cutting, high-quality wool and competitive ASBVs for carcass and welfare traits, balance is our priority, whilst maintaining doing-ability and structural correctness.
Combining Visual Selection with ASBV’s
In 2023, Haddon Rig received a 5-star rating from Sheep Genetics in recognition of our commitment to regular and accurate data collection. 2023 marks the 10th year of collecting and submitting data to Sheep Genetics for ASBV’s on the Haddon Rig stud.
DNA testing has allowed accurate pedigree recording on a large scale. By having a greater understanding of both parents we’ve been able to understand the relative performance of both dam and sire. It is helping us to achieve our genetic vision of breeding balanced and profitable animals with superior fertility, wool, early-growth.
At Haddon Rig we believe that the combination of visual assessment for wool and structure and the use of ASBV’s as an additional tool is the best way to evaluate genetic potential. By using ASBV’s, genomics and raw data, we get a more complete picture of each animal’s potential and select the best rams for breeding. Scale and data ensures greater precision and accuracy, ensuring breeding programs are efficient, effective, and sustainable.
The Sustainable Merino index is based on a production system where the majority of income is from sheep meat production, but there is still a large focus on wool clip and quality. Sustainable Merino focuses on genetic improvement of fleece weight, fibre diameter, and reproduction. A focus has also been placed on reducing wrinkle, and increasing growth and lean meat yield.
The Wool Production index is based on a production system where the majority of income is from wool clip, but there is still a focus on meat production. WP focuses on genetic improvement of fleece weight, fibre diameter, staple strength and reproduction. A focus has also been placed on reducing wrinkle.
Watch Our Breeding Philosophy Video
Consistency and reliability are our priorities, which is why we’ve thrived for over 100 years. We guarantee quality, with animals that perform throughout their lifetimes, producing wool and lambs in all conditions. This commitment keeps our clients returning year after year.
Given our continued focus on balance and ensuring a consistent line of structurally sound rams with excellent wool for our clients, we have been encouraged by the relative performance of our MP+ and DP+ indexes compared to the industry.
Further we remain well above the industry average for Adult Clean Fleece Weight (ACFW) and finer than industry for micron (Yearling Fibre Diameter or YFD) which proves that our wool remains a strong advantage of our product offering. We continue to collect breech and wrinkle scores (EBCOV and EBWR) from all our stud lambs and this is assisting us for future selections.
