Running wether trials

Wether comparisons have been an important focal point for the wool industry. The design and value of these comparisons is important when woolgrowers compare their flock’s performance with others, or when bloodlines are compared.

For those wishing to conduct a comparison, the publication "Designing and Conducting Wether Comparisons and on-farm Genetic Evaluations" provides a set of guidelines that will allow meaningful information on team differences to be gathered. This information can then be added to a larger pool of data which includes data from many other comparisons for further analysis to obtain bloodline and strain differences (the Merino Bloodline Performance package). In this analysis the variation in environment between comparisons and years is removed, leaving only the genetic variation between the described bloodlines.

Additional Trait Funding is designed to assist wether trial committees collect data on wether trial teams that would not normally be collected as part of a "traditional" trial.  Some of these traits include Staple Length and Strength; Meat Characteristics; Staple Profile; and Worm Egg Counts.