“It is ironic that we might look to Ireland to improve our breeding programmes when in the recent past it was the Irish that looked at New Zealand for best practice.” those successive crops of animals has been calculated by AbacusBio from a national perspective. The estimates are $300 million/ year for dairy cattle, $7 million for beef cattle, $125 million for sheep, and $0 for dairy beef. Further, AbacusBio was commissioned to identify, in each of these industries, the additional benefits that are “on the table” in the form of commercially available technologies proven to accelerate the rates of genetic improvement. These results were recently presented at an industry stakeholder forum in Hamilton, and showed the “size of the prize” for a high impact, medium impact, or low impact adoption of technologies and practices. The medium impact scenario was reported to offer additional annual benefits of $84 million for dairy cattle, $6 million for beef
crucial to enabling genetic improvement, and information enables better decisions. The key to better information, from mostly existing data, is the confederation of data sources that for various reasons are siloed and not shared.
cattle, $11 million for sheep, and $8 million for dairy beef. The high impact scenario had about twice that level of annual additional benefits. Many industry stakeholders at that meeting believe the size of the prize, even for the medium impact scenarios, was sufficient for the dairy industry to make a real effort to ensure this prize is realised in the cattle bred on NZ dairy farms. The additional benefits in the “prize” arise from two complementary sources. First, an increased rate of genetic gain. This means that the national calf crop born each year will on average be more profitable as a reflection of higher genetic merit, from a whole farm system perspective, than would have been the calf crops born using the status quo systems that have operated over recent years. Second, there is an “information” part of the prize. Data is
Combine NAIT, slaughterhouse data Data that is held in the National Animal Identification and Tracing system (NAIT) tracks individuals from birth through any transfers to other owners until they die onfarm or are slaughtered. Data that is collected during slaughter processing includes carcaseweight and quality, and other information such as presence of disease. Jointly processing the data from NAIT and meat processing plants will generate new data not used for cattle evaluation. That new data can improve the accuracy of components of the evaluation system, and add new avenues for genetic evaluation. The BW index reflects the ability of the national dairy herd to convert feed into
Winners of the Steak of Origin 2018 1447 Hereheretau Rd, RD 6, WAIROA 4196 PROFIT-A-BULL EXCELLENCE
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SIXTH ANNUAL ON-FARM AUCTION
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