UPDATE
TH E AUSTRALIAN
WAGYU
ISSUE 55
DEC 2013
The Australian Wagyu Update is produced by the Australian Wagyu Association Ltd. on behalf of the membership
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China's beef buying boom Wagyu boosts fertility as well as meat quality Beef freeze fails to cool demand The importance of feed conversion Gold flows for Wagyu beef How science blends with art Keep up with genetic progress or suffer consequences Achieving an increased rate of genetic gain
DATES for THE DIARY ■■
2014 National Wagyu Conference OCT 10 - 12. RACV Royal Pines Resort, Gold Coast, QLD. This follows ALFA's Beefex conference at the same venue.
NEW PRESIDENT TO 'ADVANCE BREEDING AND MARKETING' It is with great honour that I put together my first report as the newly elected President of the Australian Wagyu Association. I am looking forward to working diligently with industry to help advance Wagyu breeding and marketing in Australia.
TOP A section of the crowd at the 2013 Wagyu Conference at The Pier, Geelong. INSET Newly elected President of the Australian Wagyu Association - Scott de Bruin.
With our own operations at Mayura Station we have developed a herd of over 2000 Fullblood breeders and a total operation encompassing over 5500 head of Fullblood Wagyu cattle. A purpose built on-farm feedlot finishes our livestock which are used in our branded boxed beef program sold in key international markets. We are involved in fully registering and performance recording our cattle with the Association to drive BREEDPLAN based genetic improvement. Also we have been actively involved in the Wagyu Collaborative Genetics Research Project with over 600 Fullblood progeny carcase images analysed so far this year. The Research Project has delivered new research EBV’s, describing the genetic difference in Aus-Meat Marble Score, Marbling
percentage, fineness of marbling and Rib Eye Area which were released at this year’s Wagyu National Conference and are looking very promising for the identification of new sire’s for the Wagyu industry. There have been some 1854 carcases analysed in the Research Project to date using both Aus-Meat grading and Japanese digital camera analysis, a significant step for our industry in defining EBV’s related directly to carcase performance. It is worth noting that in the top 10 sires with the new carcase trait EBVs there are four new Australian bred sires that can match it with imported AI semen. I would like to encourage more of our members to be involved in this project to help find the new generation of genetics to take our industry into the future. Continued on Page 6