nProve Tracker measures genetic progress over time
Beef + Lamb New Zealand’s recently launched online tool, nProve Tracker, will enable farmers to track the genetic progress of their flock over time. Words Sandra Taylor.
Launched in May, nProve Tracker is the most recent addition to the nProve platform.
It combines sire information with flock data to help farmers better understand how their breeding decisions influence the future genetic performance of their flock.
Sarah Powdrell, B+LNZ Genetics Extension and Operations Manager, says nProve Tracker enables farmers to follow their sire genetics through to their ewe flock.
“Investing in genetics is a long-term commitment, it’s not an overnight gain. Farmers can wait several seasons before seeing the full impact of ram buying and breeding decisions in their flock, making genetic progress difficult to visualise and quantify.
“nProve Tracker bridges that gap by helping connect sire decisions with measurable genetic progress within the flock, making genetics more visible and actionable on farm.”
She says the tool was developed through extensive farmer engagement, testing and feedback as it was critical to ensure the tool was both user friendly and able to add real value to farmers’ businesses.
Sarah says users are able to monitor the genetic progress of their flocks over time across all traits. They can establish a genetic baseline for their ewe flock and then view the merit of individual rams as well as the combined merit of their ram teams.
“nProve Tracker allows users to create mating mob scenarios and assess the estimated merit of future progeny, which helps take the guess work out of ram purchasing and mating decisions to meet their breeding objectives.”
She says setting up nProve Tracker is easy. Farmers create an account and after purchasing rams, they can receive a link from their breeder to add their purchased rams directly to their farm’s account.
After the sires have been accepted, farmers can add information about their ewe flock to establish a genetic baseline.
The account can be updated as new rams are bought in and then assigned to mating mobs. This allows a farm’s genetic progress to be tracked over the years based on the sires used and their contribution to the ewe flock.
Sarah says there are resources on B+LNZ’s website, including videos, to show farmers how to set up an nProve Tracker account and make full use of the tool. The development of nProve Tracker was supported with funding from the Ministry for Primary Industries through the Cool Sheep programme. In addition to visualising genetic progress across all traits, the tool supports optional genetics-based greenhouse gas reporting for farmers who choose to include methane emissions in their breeding criteria.
nProve Tracker, nProve Sheep and nProve Beef have all been set up to help commercial sheep and beef farmers make more informed genetic decisions for their individual businesses and breeding objectives.
