Bare-breech breakthrough

PRODUCERS may be able to breed for bare breeches fast – and without sacrificing fleece cuts.In a breakthrough in the development of alternatives to surgical mulesing, new research has found bare breeches are highly heritable in Merinos and do not significantly affect fleece weight.It comes just days after news broke of a new boycott against Australian wool by Swedish retailing giant H&M over the mulesing issue.While some will be cynical of the new bare-breech findings, Professor Philip Hynd says the figures don’t lie.Professor Hynd and his team at the University of Adelaide have been studying bare-breech breeding for three and a half years and believe breeding for a bare breech could have a large impact in a short time. It is likely the trait is controlled by only a few genes – good news – and may be a very similar characteristic to baldness in men which is dominated by a small group of genes. By studying the Calcookara flock run on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula and assigning a bareness score across the flock, the researchers were able to also show that a bare breech does not lead to a significant loss of fleece weight or negative effects on other important wool traits such as fibre diameter, staple length or staple strength. However the researchers caution that they are aware of other bare-breech animals that do have reduced fleece weights. “We need to make sure we don’t select these unproductive bare breech types,” Professor Hynd said.“The best way to do this is to simultaneously include fleece weight and bare breech scores in a selection program.”This view may calm the fears of some stud breeders that the productivity of the Merino would be compromised through a move to bare-breech animals.The team’s research work showed that the gene’s heritability was about 0.5 in hoggets and adult animals.“0.5 and above is considered highly heritable and essentially means that half of what you see is due to genetics, so rapid progress can be made provided there is variance in the flock,” Professor Hynd said.The bare breech genes are likely to be found right across Australia – a fact not lost on the Adelaide team which has been inundated with information and photographs from flocks that had sheep with the trait from various strains and bloodlines. “Sure, the incidence of bare breech will vary between bloodlines and regions, so the rate of progress towards mules-free sheep will differ between flocks across Australia. But we are very optimistic that breeding for a productive bare-breech Merino is not only possible but should be achievable relatively quickly,” Professor Hynd said.