Joint presentations from pedigree breeders and their commercial farming customers, followed by a debate about their different situations, emphasised the very different approaches from total focus on performance recording right through to more reliance on physical appraisal.

Lleyn breeder, Dai Morris, spoke about the importance of breed societies in enforcing ‘quality control’ in pedigree stock, while commercial farmer Sion Jones said he was less concerned about societies focusing on visual attributes like colouring, and more on providing performance figures to help his Lleyn ewes rear lambs equivalent to 100% of their bodyweight every year.

Welsh Mountain breeder, Tim Tyne, echoed this, saying any claims by a sheep society about the attributes of their breed was ‘wishful thinking’ unless it was backed up by performance data. At the other end of the spectrum, Texel breeder Margaret Lawrence and her customer, Martin Greenfield, spoke about the importance of assessing the visual appearance of the animal, with a focus on conformation.

Phil Stocker, NSA Chief Executive, chaired the debate. He said: “The balance between visual assessment of animals and performance data is vital in the production of breeding stock, but it is clear that both are needed when we have such a complicated marketplace in the UK sheep sector. The key is knowing which market you are supplying, regardless of whether you’re a pedigree breeder or commercial lamb producer, and assessing your performance on a regular basis to make sure you are meeting requirements.

"Someone like Martin on a lowland farm selling lambs through farmers markets is going to want very different breeding stock to Sion’s upland unit that is focused on uniformity of ewe and lamb performance."