Pedigree MatchMaker: Can it tell us more than just pedigree?

Pedigree MatchMaker is an RFID panel reader system that collects sheep movements to and from watering points over a 2 week period to identify pedigree. While this system was primarily developed to identify the pedigree of lambs, it may also provide information relating to lamb and ewe behaviour traits which influence sheep performance. Traits were calculated from the Pedigree MatchMaker data to describe the level of association between the lamb and its assigned dam, as well as some traits to reflect timing and frequency of passes through the panel reader. Variance components for these traits were estimated and relationships with other standard Sheep Genetics production traits studied. The Pedigree MatchMaker traits examined in this study were shown to be moderately heritable ranging from 0.15 average time between a ewe and her lamb to 0.53 for the number of close reads. The preliminary correlations suggest some favourable correlations between these traits and production traits. Based on these results further study is warranted on a larger data set.