A Brazilian farmer's trip to the Royal Welsh Winter Fair has led to a visit by Texel Sheep Society chief executive, Steven Maclean, and chairman, Keith Campbell, to Uruguay and Brazil. The pair will this week( August 30) join a Department of Trade and Industry sponsored trade mission to promote British livestock.

They were invited by Brazilian Texel sheep producer and sheep's milk cheesemaker, Marcio Aguinsky. He was so impressed by the quality of the livestock he saw at the Winter Fair and on farms in Wales and Scotland that he wanted fellow countrymen to learn more about British livestock.

Steven Maclean said they're looking forward to visiting the Prado Show in Ururquay during its centenary celebrations. It's the biggest in Uruguay and Brazil and is considerably larger in scale than any of the UK's Royal Shows.

"Keith will be judging the Texel classes and I will be judging the Suffolks", said Steven. "It's a great honour to be asked to judge there. We're proud to be able to help promote excellence in these countries where there is so much potential in terms of sheep production and exports.

"One aim of the trip from our perspective is to follow up a whole series of export inquiries, particularly for Texel embryos. We want to further these initial leads once the export protocols have been agreed and finalised.

"I will also be speaking at a seminar at Port Alegro, Brazil. There I will be explaining how the UK sheep industry has developed and how conformation and performance has been improve by means of performance recording and sire reference schemes".

Mr Maclean said he would be explaining that more than a hundred Texel Flocks had performance recorded their lambs within the National Texel Breeding Evaluation in 2005. Over 10,000 Texel lambs were evaluated on an annual basis within an across flock evaluation that contains nearly 300,000 pedigree and performance records.

The rates of gain had been impressive. Since 1992 the breeding potential of the average recorded Texel lamb for growth to 21 weeks of age has increased by over 5kg, accompanied by an equally impressive increase in eye muscle depth.

And in the age of the geneticist rather than the farm management advisor, new challenges included opportunities to select for traits such as resistance to scrapie, to nematode infection, possibly to mastitis, foot-rot and other diseases.

The big challenge for the breed was getting new pedigree breeders to start performance recording and acknowledge the importance of EBVs. In a breed the size of the Texel the number of flocks involved in performance recording is still too low, hence investment in a database that will bring together pedigree and performance recording strategies. This will lead to major advances in the penetration rate of recording in the coming years.

Texel Genetics To South America