The project is being led by ICM, in collaboration with ABP Food Group with support from Sheep Ireland, and according to ICM, the aim of the project is "to demonstrate the benefits of using five star rams on family farms across a range of systems".

The two farms participating in the initiative are located in south Co. Kerry and are similar in nature.

Lowland grazing is limited and is offered during mating, directly post lambing and then mainly retained for weaned / finishing lambs.

One of the farms involved in the trial supplies store lambs to the ABP Demo Farm in the autumn where they are fattened and finished, while the other farm takes its own lambs from birth to finish.

Over the lambs' lifetime, data will be collected to compare the progeny performance of the five star sired lambs to the progeny from lambs sired by lower star rams.

To date, the single lambs born in the trial had an average weight 5.8kg while the twin lambs had an average birth weight of 4.8kg.

On the first trial farm, a total of 70 out of the 100 trial ewes have lambed with 120 lambs on the ground to date. These ewes scanned at 1.6 lambs/ewe. The second farmer will be lambing from next week on.

The data to recorded from the trial will include:

Ewe tag number for each ram;
Scanning rate;
Lamb birth weight and date (lambs tagged at birth for identification);
Weaning weight;
Weighed once/month from 30kg to finish (minimum);
Liveweight before finish;
Carcass quality;
Health issues.

All lambs sired by the trial rams will be genotyped to monitor they are the correct bunch of lambs and to see how influential the five star rating is on the progeny performance of each individual ram.

According to ICM, it is hoped that findings from the trial will help farmers to improve the carcass quality, age at finish and overall health of their lambs.

The processor believes that improving these traits will lead to "a more economic and environmentally sustainable lamb-production system".

Farmers can find out more about the ICM lamb sustainability project here.