Innovis has evolved from providing breeding services to the sheep industry to an innovative company that combines science-led breeding with sound stockmanship to produce maternal and composite ewe breeding lines bred to meet the needs of forward-thinking farmers. Innovis is now the leading supplier of performance-recorded, forage-bred rams to the UK sheep industry. The Innovis breeding programme is constantly evolving, using the latest technology to ensure they are breeding sheep not just for today, but for the future.
Committed to research and development, Innovis has built on its successful and established crossbreeding programmes, resulting in a selection of maternal and terminal sire lines that meet the demands of the modern livestock market. Innovis is different in that it has developed breeding lines to help individual farmers adapt their systems to increase sustainability and lamb productivity on marginal or arable land and to improve efficiency and reduce labor costs. The lines are suitable for outdoor lambing and produce top carcass specification from a reduced cost base. In addition to its own breeding programmes, Innovis has also partnered with Focus Genetics to become the sole UK distributor of their Highlander dam lines and Primera meat sires.
By applying the scientific principles of genetics, Innovis has bred flocks that are fit for purpose, enabling individual farms to meet their own management challenges with the flocks they keep, allowing them to adapt to more sustainable and profitable systems. Innovis has challenged the traditional breeding sheep market by marketing its maternal and terminal lines with data-driven evaluations that allow farmers to identify the rams that will deliver the performance that best suits their own business objectives. This is in contrast to the way most farmers will have bought and sold stock in the past. Innovis has facilitated its own ram sales and selection days to sell rams in a way that gives customers the opportunity to make an informed choice in their purchase and reduces biosecurity risk. Faced with the challenge of expanding the business both in terms of flock numbers and location, Innovis relocated to Southfield, a Buccleuch farm in the Scottish Borders. This move has allowed Innovis to increase its flock and record them on a system that mirrors that of their customers, as well as providing the opportunity for further growth in the Scottish market.
Innovis has focused on breeding sheep that will thrive and perform on forage-based systems and provide a healthy return for its customers. The ideal sheep that meets these criteria also ticks most of the boxes for a sheep that will help meet the sustainability challenges of the future. All of its sheep are managed and measured on forage-based systems, allowing them to identify the genetics that will perform consistently without concentrates. Year on year genetic improvement in the Terminal sire lines means that lambs are expected to spend 9-10 days less on the farm than five years ago - a further benefit in reducing costs and contributing to lower methane emissions. The need for intervention at lambing and lamb losses have been dramatically reduced over the years in all their breeding lines. In addition to its breeding programme, Innovis offers a scrapie genotyping service to help breeders ensure they are free of the disease, providing an environmental and economic benefit to the industry as a whole; provides ultrasound scanning services to Signet flocks in Wales and England; and shares its breeding expertise to provide operational support for innovative breeding initiatives to help improve the genetics of Welsh hill flocks. By working with farmers from across the UK, Innovis is able to share ideas and research to benefit the wider community.