LIVESTOCK
Breeding
who indicated the collaborations and developments are productive and positive for the NZ beef industry. Demonstration and adoption of aids to genetic improvement being facilitated by Rissington and their partners were outlined by Rissington’s Daniel Absolom. They have installed some automated liveweight and feed intake equipment from Canadian company Grow Safe Systems. Provision of the automated electronic weighing allows innovative measurement of feed intake and animal growth. This author is familiar with the technology after setting up jointly with GrowSafe a demonstration and research system in 2009 at the University of New England’s Tullimba feedlot in Australia. There is great potential for NZ use in evaluation of feed conversion efficiency (FCE) as Australian research has shown a good correlation between animal feedlot FCE with that at pasture. Rissington has the only GrowSafe demonstration units in NZ.
RFID ear tags
Progressive beef breeding opportunities BY: DR KEN GEENTY
A
new wave of collaboration and innovation sweeping across our beef industry will progressively inform and empower bull breeders and commercial producers. Included will be customised New Zealand based estimated breeding values (EBVs) and indexes, multibreed evaluations, and delivery of genomics EBVs based on DNA information validated against production measurements. Additional availability of electronic data capture tools and reproductive technologies will help accelerate genetic improvement. Farmer uptake of these emerging new and improved technologies will translate to greater cumulative and permanent production and profit from beef cattle. Some of the players driving these progressive developments are Beef + Lamb New Zealand Genetics, NZ beef breed societies and the Hawkes Bay-based Rissington Cattle Company. Partners of the latter include Leachman Cattle of Colorado,
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Zoetis, Animal Breeding Services, Grow Safe Systems, and other Angus breeders. More information is on their respective websites.
Informing NZ Beef A new homegrown NZ beef breeding scheme entitled ‘Informing NZ Beef’ is being developed by B+LNZ Genetics and partners. The programme, based on NZ evaluations, will develop new traits and indexes using valuable experience from the long established sheep genetics system nProve. The new beef cattle system will take account of NZ pasture-based challenges and opportunities and will embrace various partnerships and collaborations. The collaborative grouping around the Rissington Cattle Company and partners has synergies with the new B+LNZ programme via some common objectives. The Rissington cluster gives an international flavour with access to a global beef database containing some 1.4 million beef animals in NZ, Australia, US, UK, and France. Associated with both above groupings is AbacusBio’s beef specialist Dr Jason Archer
Capabilities with each animal having radio frequency identification (RFID) Allflex ear tags include live measurement of individual animal feed and water intakes and recording of animal live weights with automated voluntary walk-over-weighing in the yards. This information, accessed live and retrospectively on a stand-alone computer system, enables recording of vast quantities of feed intake and live weight performance data. As well as detailed feed intake and liveweight trends over time the data can also be used for management in commercial feedlots with identification of slow growing animals with health or other problems. Estimates of bull or progeny FCE from residual feed intake (RFI) over a 50-70 day recording period can be derived from the data. RFI is the difference between measured feed intake and expected intake from published requirements for maintenance and growth with lower or negative values being best. Since feed represents about 70% of production costs selection for low RFI is very beneficial as it has a moderate heritability of 35-40%. Availability of multiple liveweights allows accurate estimates of feed intake to liveweight gain ratios or FCE. Use of the GrowSafe technology is more prevalent in Australia where use of feedlots for cattle and sheep is much more widespread than in NZ. However there are opportunities here to set up more sire and/ or progeny group tests for RFI on farms with feedlot facilities or on already established feedlots.
Country-Wide Beef
May 2021