What will the project do?

Our goal is to breed productive, efficient maternal sheep with a naturally low carbon footprint.

To achieve this we are:

• Measuring methane output in fully performance recorded lambs to help us identify the best sheep to breed from

• Gathering data on feed efficiency and rumen biology to help develop a sustainable breeding strategy for ewes that make better use of our land and have a lower carbon footprint

• Demonstrating the impact that efficient, low methane sheep can have on whole farm carbon footprint

• Sharing what we find with the wider sheep industry so that we all benefit from improved efficiency

The project will initially develop on-farm protocols and use new innovative tools and technologies including mobile Portable Accumulation Chambers (PAC) to predict methane output from grazing sheep alongside measures of health, production and efficiency traits on thousands of individual sheep across seven maternal breeds, and more than 30 flocks.

Further measurements, including feed efficiency, rumen size and microbiome profiles, will improve understanding of the underlying biology and ensure that reductions in methane emissions are synergistic with sustainable genetic improvement of ewe productivity on UK grass and forage.

This comprehensive set of information will enable understanding of the genetic control of these characteristics and DNA sampling will allow relationships with the underlying genome of the sheep to be investigated. This will result in tools to compare the breeding value of sheep in the flocks, identifying breeding stock that will contribute to improving farm carbon footprint.