DOCILITY

At Te Mania Angus to measure docility, we crush-score our animals on a scale from 1 to 5, using the Angus Breedplan descriptions. All Te Mania Angus cattle are run in large contemporary groups, which means variations in animal temperament provides quantifiable information to accurately calculate a heritability in the trait.

Most Te Mania Angus cattle will score around 2 – we rarely have 4s or 5s any more because we have been selecting on docility for so long our bell curve has moved towards 1. So the genetic distribution is more likely to be docile.

We also perform docility scores on all the young weaners as this information improves the accuracy of the weaners’ parents – and the entire herd – now and into the future.

Te Mania Angus has been measuring docility for 20 years and collecting the data a long, long time before the EBV was developed.

Our herd is particularly quiet phenotypically because our stockmen and women are trained through Low Stress Stock Handling schools and handle our animals consistently, with respect.

We don’t publish the temperament score, we publish the genotype, the EBV. At Te Mania Angus we are selling bulls to assist our clients in breeding profitable offspring.

Therefore we try to encourage our clients to use genotypic information (EBVs) rather than phenotypic (looking at the raw data, weights, scrotal size, scans) because the genotype also includes genetic analysis providing a more likely outcome for breeding purposes.