Feetfirst - Footrot Research Project

Since 2013 NZM has been working on an ambitious project ‘FeetFirst’ to develop an estimated breeding value (EBV) for footrot. This breeding value is a tool to select and breed from sheep that are genetically resistant to footrot. In 2020 the breeding value was released on the breeding value platform ‘Sheep Genetics’ through MERINOSELECT. This commercially available breeding value is a significant milestone for the fine wool industry which is now actively moving towards a footrot-free future.

Key things to know about the new footrot breeding value:

When you search a sheep’s ID on MERINOSELECT the following information will show.

• On Sheep Genetics the footrot trait is called FR

• The more negative it’s breeding value, the less genetically susceptible a sheep is to footrot

• The footrot trait is not correlated with any production traits, meaning using the breeding value won’t affect other traits you’ve worked hard to select for or against

• Susceptibility to footrot is moderately heritable (approximately 25%) meaning that a substantial proportion of the trait variation is explained by genetics

Find footrot breeding values on Sheep Genetics’ website at sheepgenetics.org.au

Footrot project video update - June 2019

Seven years ago, NZM initiated the fine-wool Central Progeny Test, which is a key source of the data required to develop an estimated breeding value (EBV) for footrot. Since then, the fine-wool industry has built a footrot breeding value (BV) database containing 60,000 sheep with reportable breeding values. In the 2019 / 20 sale season there were over 4,500 (2018-born) stud ram hoggets in the industry with a footrot BV available.

Watch the video for project update, and click here for a written summary of the video.

How did this project come about?

The overall objective of the FeetFirst project is to raise fine-wool sheep productivity, as well as enable growers in higher rainfall areas to transition to farming fine-wool sheep, by developing a new tool for identifying animals with better genetic resistance to footrot. Utilising genomics, pedigree and physical data, the FeetFirst project has developed an estimated breeding value (EBV) for footrot resistance in fine-wool sheep. Breeders are able to use the EBV to predict an animal's genetic resistance to footrot when making breeding selections.

FeetFirst is a part of the Primary Growth Partnership program (PGP) led by The New Zealand Merino Company and co-funded by Merino New Zealand Incorporated (Merino Inc.) and the Ministry for Primary Industries. 

Click here for the 2017 project summary from Dr. Mark Ferguson.

Central progeny test results

A core component of the central progeny test (CPT) is to determine the genetic resistance of rams to footrot by testing the performance of their progeny in the same environment. Each year, all of the wether hoggets from the CPT are exposed to footrot at the same time. Once a challenge has been established in the mob, each hoof of each animal is scored using a 0 to 5 scale (click here for more information). Using this data, breeding values for footrot resistance are generated for the sire of each progeny group. With each year of the CPT, we are building a bigger, richer data set, which is improving the accuracy of the footrot breeding value - not only for the rams entered in the CPT, but for their relatives also.

We add the CPT data to the data collected from the individual studs that challenge their stud flock for footrot, along with the original FeetFirst data that was collected from commercial flocks from 2013 to 2015 and the data from the ram challenge that NZM and AgResearch undertook in 2013-14.

Investigation into the effectiveness of the Lincoln footrot gene marker test

As part of the wider FeetFirst project, we undertook an evaluation of the relationship between the Lincoln footrot gene marker test (LFGMT) and the incidence and severity of footrot in rams and their progeny. A summary of the results can be found here. 

While the evaluation did not find a strong relationship between the LFGMT and resistance to footrot, the positive news for the industry is that the wider FeetFirst project is showing that there is exploitable genetic variation in the resistance of fine-wool sheep to footrot in the New Zealand sheep population. By shifting the focus from a gene marker test to a breeding value, the New Zealand fine-wool industry will soon have a more accurate tool to successfully breed for increasing tolerance to footrot.