New Zealand’s beef industry is booming with record prices being paid for weaners. This buoyant market means that it is even more important that commercial breeders make informed decisions before investing in bulls this year.
Beef + Lamb New Zealand has a number of tools and resources to help farmers with their decision-making before and at sale day.
These include the Better Beef Breeding on-line learning module, Better Beef Breeding workshops – which are being held around the country over the next few weeks – and nProve Beef, a user-friendly online tool which will help farmers select the bulls – and breeders - that best meet their specific breeding objectives
Included in nProve Beef are three beef selection indexes designed for New Zealand farming systems; NZ$Maternal, NZ$Terminal and NZ$BeefxDairy. The indexes have been tailored to each respective breed based on differences in recording and evaluations.
Jason Archer, B+LNZ’s Head of Genetics, says the indexes were developed to take the complexity out of buying bulls.
“Farmers who only buy bulls once a year can be presented with up to 58 pieces of information about each bull which can be confusing.”
Archer says while the indexes present buyers with just one number, it is still useful to know the traits behind each index, hence the development of sub-indexes, or trait groupings.
These help buyers understand what a particular bull is good at and include calving ease, maternal cow traits, finishing and carcase attributes.
Hawkes Bay-based vet and consultant Dave Warburton says nProve Beef makes it easy for users to put in the criteria aligning with their breeding objectives and come up with a range of breeders who meet those criteria. Within those breeders, there will also be a number of bulls that will also meet the user’s requirements.
“It means that farmers don’t need to know the exact numbers, or EBVs, for each breed. Instead, users can use sliders to select the top 20% of animals for a particular trait.”
Warburton points out that bigger isn’t necessarily better with commercial beef breeding, especially in hill country environments, and the slide mechanism in nProve Beef allows for moderation.
Users can pull the dual sliders up and down and select animals that might, for example, be between the top 20–40% for a particular trait.
“It brings up the next tier animals that might be more suitable for a more challenging environment.”
Warburton says another advantage of nProve Beef is that four breeds (NZ Angus, Hereford, Simmental, Shorthorn) are represented in one place, so bull buyers don’t have to go to individual websites to get the information they need. Becky to check if we can mention new breeds coming on board (AngusPro / South Devon)
“It’s easier to find animals within each of the breeds represented.”
It is also mobile-friendly and as a consultant, Warburton says he can be looking at a number of bulls with a client and use nProve Beef to identify the bulls that meet their criteria.