The sheep processor Irish Country Meats (ICM) originally launched its Lamb Sustainability Trial in collaboration with ABP Food Group 12 months ago.
The aim of the trial is to demonstrate the financial and environmental gains associated with using five-star terminal rams across a range of different family farm systems.
One leg of the trial looked at the performance of five-star sired lambs on a Kerry-based farm bringing all lambs from birth to finish.
ABP Food Group’s farm liaison officer, Gavin Healy, explained that as part of the trial, a total of 130 five-star sired lambs and 135 conventionally-sired lambs from the same farm were followed from birth to slaughter.
Both groups of lambs in the trial had similar birth and weaning dates. Healy said:
“Very little differences in the two groups were seen up to weaning which is a reflection of the cooler than usual weather in late Spring and into early Summer.
“From there, the five-star lambs massively outperformed their counterparts. Both groups were mixed together all the way through to slaughter. On average, the five-star group finished 12 days sooner with a 1.5kg carcass weight advantage.
“Both the added carcass value and reduced finishing period gave way to an impressive financial advantage for the farmer. Naturally, this will also significantly reduce the carbon footprint of the lambs.”
A separate system in the trial is focusing on the use of terminal five-star rams in a birth to store operation.
For this trial, 150 lambs were monitored from birth and were purchased onto the ABP Demo Farm’s store lamb enterprise in August of this year.
This group are among the 700 lambs on the farm that will be brought into their finishing period later this month.
A full health and performance breakdown will be carried out once they are processed in ICM’s Camolin site in early 2025.
2025 born lambs in ICM trial
The rams have been out on each of the trial farms over the past month ahead of the 2025 lambing season.
This year, a third trial farm has been included in the project. This farm is based in the west of the country and running Mayo horned ewes. All lambs on this farm will be brought to slaughter in ICM Navan.
The five-star group will be sired by Texel rams purchased at the Sheep Ireland Elite €uro-Star Multi-Breed Ram Sale.
Meanwhile, ewes on the other two trial farms have been running with pedigree Suffolk and Texel rams. Updates from these trials will follow after Christmas.