I spotted an interesting bit of data on two sibling rams that made me pause for a moment. Usually, when rams are born, they simply inherit an average of the NSIP maternal traits coming from their parents. So their scores will be identical here, and won’t typically change until those rams have female progeny, which are subsequently bred, feeding data back up the pedigree to their sires. Where the rams will differ distinctly is on weight data, once it’s collected on them, and averaged with the scores coming out of their pedigree history. But a quick glance at these twins highlights something notable in their data at four months of age:

  BWT WWT PWWT PSC NLB NLW MBWT MWWT Maternal$ Hair
5007

0.354

2.033

3.247

0.552

23%

20%

-0.01

0.447

117.72

108.61

5008

0.361

1.669

2.263

0.372

22%

19%

-0.01

0.433

116.16

103.39

 

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