Computer Assists Lamb Breeding

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30085, 20 March 1963, Page 7

Computer Assists Lamb Breeding

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.AJ

LONDON, March 19. A £50,000 computer is being used by a Yorkshire farmer to help him market lambs of Just the size and balance of fat and lean demanded by British housewives. He is Mir Cyril Thornber, who has a hatchery firm producing one-third of Britain's egg-laying hens in eight hatcheries, backed by five experimental farms. The methods he has used for breeding hens he is now applying to sheep. He aims to produce rams guaranteed to sire lambs ‘“which will put exactly the same shape and size of joint on the shop

counter in the shortest time and on the most economical rations,” says the “Daily Mail.” To his successful team of geneticists he has added Sheep expert, Dr. John Broadbent. Even record cards for the sheep are similar to those used for poultry and are handled by his already expert staff. Breeding Permutations The same £50.000 computer will "process” cards providing quick answers to innumerable breeding permutations which otherwise might take so long to prove by practical experiment that the rams on test could die before the results became known. The ultimate judge of Mr Thomber’s success is the housewife whose buying preferences show which are the meatiest and most profitable lambs. Mr Thornber has the support of one of Britain's most famous firms of butchers which records the weight and retail value of a carcase spread over 10 major cuts. From 100 lambs analysed last year, 34 sired by one ram were worth £l4 10s more than those of another. By 1966 or 1967 Mr Thornber will probably be breeding lambs which look as different from their forebears as his egg layers do from the Rhode Island red.