In 2007, following extensive industry consultation, Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) & Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) developed the Visual Sheep Scores to:
• Provide the Australian sheep industry with a standardised set of visual assessment scores for the consistent description of important phenotypic traits of all breeds of sheep;
• Develop a quick and simple scoring system to help sheep classers and breeders select sheep on visually-assessed traits to accelerate genetic gain;
• Enable sheep breeders and classers to record and submit visual score data and genetic information to Sheep Genetics to progress development of across-flock Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBVs) for visually-assessed traits; and
• Enable researchers to estimate the heritability of visually-assessed sheep traits, and to measure their relationships, if any, on important production traits such as fleece weight, fibre diameter, growth rate and body weight.
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