The Tygerhoek research farm has hosted several studies on Merino sheep with historic data and pedigrees dating back to the late 1960’s. The farm supported studies on direct and correlated responses to selection for clean fleece weight while keeping fibre diameter at the same level over a study period of 40 years from 1970-2009. At present, the farm maintains the Tygerhoek Fine wool Merino Research flock, a ‘proof of concept’ sheep breeding experiment that stems from a population with a pedigree dating back to the 1990’s and descended from the well-known fine wool research flock at Cradock. This project focuses on breeding for lower fibre diameter without seriously sacrificing performance in reproduction and other economically important traits. The flock regularly receives the highest wool price at the auction where its wool is marketed and maintains an average fibre diameter of below 14-micron in its hogget replacements.

It is also one of the very few flocks in the country with a comprehensive recording program for the so-called ‘difficult to measure’ fitness traits, including faecal worm egg count, breech flystrike incidence and associated traits. The Tygerhoek flock has also been a key population in the WCDoA sheep genotyping scheme. In this capacity, it was one of five research flocks used to validate the benefit of genomic information in South African sheep. Other recent research projects use historic data to study genetic aspects of reproduction and lamb survival, as well as the possible effect of heat stress on ewe conception. It is currently participating in projects attempting to do across flock evaluations for nematode resistance, a first step toward finding ways in which information generated in research flocks under institutional control can be leveraged to directly benefit genetic evaluations of fitness traits in industry.