This week on the Head Shepherd podcast we have Bronwyn Clarke chatting to Mark about her career in agriculture, the research she's currently involved in, and the wealth of knowledge that she has around sheep genetics.

Bronwyn is an expert in genetics-focused R&D and project management, and has over 20 years of experience in the New Zealand and Australian Merino industries.

Bronwyn did not grow up around sheep, spending her childhood in Papua New Guinea. But, fast forward a few years, Bronwyn completed her Bachelor of Science in Wool and Pastoral Science in Sydney, and so the passion for sheep began. She then completed a PhD at the University of New England, focusing on quantitative genetics. Since then, much of Bronwyn's work has been in helping commercial farmers and breeders understand the use of genetics.

The Merino Validation Project was one that Bronwyn ran around 20 years ago (and which, coincidentally, set Mark up in his PhD, with a wealth of carcass data already available to hand). They added over 100,000 records into the database over two years, helping build up the information needed to get the genetic parameters, heritability and correlations with carcass traits and wool traits in merinos.

During their conversation, Bronwyn and Mark talk about the 'twin effect', and how conventional classing practices can lead to a bias against twins. Current trial work is keeping 'cull' animals in the flock and tracking their progress. After the first few years, the results are showing that twins catch up with their single counterparts, which is something you wouldn't know if they had been culled as a lamb.

Bronwyn is now chair of AAABG, the Association for the Advancement of Animal Breeding and Genetics. The organisation brings together livestock scientists, breeders, educators, students and industry service providers across Australia and New Zealand. The major event for AAABG members is an international conference held every two years. Bronwyn's aim is to get more farmers involved in the conferences, so we hope our listeners will get involved!

To find out more about AAABG, follow this link: http://www.aaabg.org/aaabghome/.

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