Words by Victoria Rutherford — AngusPRO Magazine 2024
Images by Elise Rutherford for Beef + Lamb New Zealand
Finding a ‘free lunch’ is almost impossible in the farming world these days, but North Canterbury commercial beef farmer Andy Mason reckons he’s stumbled across one.
Andy uses the genomic tool Igenity® to rank his heifers on traits that impact productivity, allowing him to focus his resources on breeding stock with strong genetic merit. He selects his heifer replacements before weaning, and as a commercial farmer, the process has been an eye-opener, particularly when it comes to the assumption that ‘biggest is best’.
“Like many farmers, we were selling the lightest half of our heifers and keeping the heaviest half, thinking that they were the genetically superior ones,” Andy said.
“But [though genomic testing] we discovered was there’s no truth in that. There was no consistency in the data at all by taking the heaviest half at weaning.”
Andy and his wife Angie winter 350 mixed-age and R2 Angus breeding cows on their 1000ha hill country property, St Leonards Station, in the Lowry Peak Range near Culverden.
They also winter around 85 replacement heifers along with 70 steer calves on a 40ha block at Amberley House where they live. They have relationships with repeat buyers through PGW stock agent Nic Denton, who purchase the calves on a per kilogram basis.
“The repeat buyers know what we’re doing with our genetic improvement and they’re coming along on the journey as well.”
As Next Generation Herd farmers, they are part of Beef and Lamb New Zealand’s Informing New Zealand Beef (INZB) programme, designed to generate more income for beef producers and the economy while protecting the environment.
By understanding the value of better genetics, commercial farmers can select the right genetics for their system and drive greater profitability. These herds feed back performance data collected in commercial environments, genomic data calibrated against commercial reality, female replacement selection and carcass data. They are now in their third year of collecting herd data.
Finding the free lunch
One of the big blocks many commercial farmers have is justifying the costs of the genomic analysis, which is around $50 per head.
“I always had a desire to do it, but I could never quite figure out how to make it work financially,” Andy said.
Then he had a lightbulb moment. By choosing genomics over liveweight, he could cover costs by selling the heavier heifers that didn’t make the grade on the traits they were selecting for.
“Through this programme we’ve discovered we can isolate our genetically superior heifer replacements at zero cost by the increased value of selling our heavier, genetically poorer heifers at weaning rather than simply keeping the heaviest half. It’s rare to get a free lunch in farming but we get one every year now, and the flow-on is massive.”
Tissue sampling is done at marking during the last week of November. There are 17 subsets to consider for maternal, performance, and carcass traits. While tissue sampling makes calf marking a little more intensive, it’s worth it.
“The data enables us to go through the heifer calves and select on things that are important to us. Sometimes we might look closely at a high indexing heifer calf, but when it’s really low on docility or something like that, it gets a big X.”
This made an immediate gain in temperament and management in the first year.
“There were always three or four at the end of the replacement heifer mob that would run the other way for no apparent reason, causing drama and wasted time. We just don’t get those animals anymore.”
Having help from structural assessor Bill Austin with fertility and structural culling has further advanced the herd.
“Bill brings another dimension to it all and it’s a tremendous learning experience. We’ve seen an increase in quality in our herd’s output because we’ve taken that bottom end out.”
Before the genomic programme they were already selecting heifer calves from the heifer mob for replacements, having confidence they’d punch above their weight (due to better genetics) over the mixed-age progeny, even if they were on the lighter side at weaning. They were more lenient on the heifer’s heifers weaning weight, taking animals at 180kg as opposed to over 210kg from the MA cows.
“We found this lower weaning weight made no difference in outputs after running these heifer’s heifers through the next couple of winters and getting them in calf twice.
“This gave me the courage to select genomically superior heifers that weren’t just the heaviest half because by the time the bull goes out, they’ve caught up and sometimes surpassed their heavier peers. And it’s even been the case as we’ve increased the number of steers wintered and there’s more competition in the mob.”
Andy looks for top quality yearling bulls that can be used over his heifers to breed replacements, with a focus on sourcing stud-quality genetics at a commercial price. The herd was largely built on Te Mania genetics, which still feature in the bull battery, together with other genetics from around the country.
Seven bulls go out with the 270 MA cow mob (1:40 ratio) on the steep country at the back of the Lowry Range. The recently calved R3s are run on the easier front country facing Culverden with two bulls, while two yearling bulls cover the 85 replacement heifers on the home block at Amberley.
Andy prefers to take a big picture approach to selecting his bulls.
“Growth, IMF, fertility, temperament – they‘re all important. Everything’s a compromise, but our desire to compromise is pretty low because I don’t think you have to. If you believe in genetics, then it makes it very hard for you to go out and buy a below-average bull.”
He also notes the importance of the heredity factor when it comes to EBVs in their commercial situation.
“Sometimes a bull might be great in every way except one or two of the EBVs may not be totally appropriate for us. But when you break it down, we’re able to select heifers from that bull, picking up issues on the bell curve in Igenity® and send those heifers away at weaning. Heifer selection with Igenity® gives us more flexibility in our bull purchasing decisions.”
One thing Andy would like but misses out on is not having last year’s bull success rate data before the bulls go out again.
“That’s a frustration, but to get that data, I’d have to mark the calves too early causing mismothering and all sorts of things, given the country they calve on.”
He gets it for the following year, and from this, he can gauge bull performance and work out bull pairings for first calvers.
“It’s not really about finding out that this bull’s not as good as that bull, sometimes one is just pushier than the other, so I’ll put two, non-pushy bulls together with my first calvers just to suck a little bit more genetics out of those bulls.”
Andy is a firm believer that you can have it all, and genetic selection is an invaluable tool.
“We’re commercial farmers, we can’t go and pay a hundred thousand dollars for a bull, so you need to work a bit harder at finding the genetics at a value that works.”