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July 2010
It is becoming very wet, and the ground is becoming soaked and puggie. Beef and lamb prices are rising worldwide but not over here. We are becoming controlled by monopolies as are many of the agriculture commodities in other countries. There is rapidly becoming a time when we must control our own commodities. Probably the time is now! Fractionalization within our industries are holding up progress and with too many egos at stake. In New Zealand we must be approaching the time when the dairy industry has taken all the best land and the sheep and beef industries will be down to a minimum size. Whether that will be sustainable it will be interesting to see. “ Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it” so round and round we go. Have we no one of intelligence or vision in this little country, history tells us that the dairy industry will have a large downturn. If the sheep and beef industry has been allowed to lose its inrostructure it can never be recovered.The economics of any country depends upon the multitude of products it produces and the diversity of markets to which those products go. So round and round we go, always behind because of the stupidity of our politicians. My newsletter this month is about the bull. The theory says that “ the bull not only controls the amount of improvement but also its extent.” If you have a one sire herd then each year half the genes of the whole herd are contributed from that one bull. That means with the one bull, you either improve your herd or the herddeteriorates. With a new bull it very seldom stays still. The bull is of the utmost importance, and every effort should be made to get an improver bull. In the wild the male animals go through the most stringent tests before they get the females, but now since humans have interferred, they make arbitrary decisions sometimes totally irrelevant to what is required.Natures demands are totally aimed at survival as it is with all animals. That is why nature tests male animals so hard to make sure that the very best and fittest gets the females.In Nature animals are constantly moving to adjust to changes in the environment.But again since humans took up the sire selection process, they are selecting some animals that can and often are, right outside environmental demands Bulls should be carefully observed when they are turned out with the cows.This applies especially to virgin bulls but to old bulls as well. Newly purchased bulls often take some time to begin working and occasionally they do not begin at all. If they have been semen tested at least you know that they are viable and should go straight into service.But this does not mean that they should not be observed as they can have accidents, slipping and ricking a back leg or their back, getting a corkscrew penis and any manner of things that will put them off working.Never forget that this is the most important time of the whole production cycle and your profit depends on your live calving percentage so anything and every thing you can do to raise that percentage is well worth it. It is unwise to turnout out a number of bulls in one mob of cows as the loss in bulls can be high. Bulls have a high and defined pecking order but competition exists all through the season for the cows that are coming on.As the season progresses the number of cows cycling become less and less making more competition from the bulls. The bulls are most vulnerable while up working and another bull come charging in and easily break a back leg or a stifle. If you are using a number of bulls on a mob of cows, then it is better to put them out one at a time or when you observe that the present bull is beginning to tire. Put out your most favoured bull first because if he is working as he should be, he will get a large proportion of the cows in calf in the first cycle especially if he is an experienced bull. A first season bull will service the same cow a dozen times, an experienced bull will complete the service once and then go on to look for the next cow. Cows will come looking for the bull whenever they are coming on, an and old bull will often be in a place where he is most comfortable waiting for the cows to come to him. Watch the cows closely in the mating season especially as the first 21 days are coming up. Ifyour cows are recorded then take a note of a cow that you have observed that has been successfully serviced, making sure that she does not return. Beware if you see a number of cows around the bull.It could be that he is not settling them. Bull behavior All male animals have a territorial space around them that if infringed, can be dangerous.You too can infringe their space and can be at risk. You have noticed that mobs of bulls can be settled in a field but when you mob them to shift them to another area ,or for yarding, they begin to fight and to become very unsettled. This is because other bulls are infringing their territory.All mobs of bulls have a strated society in that there is a boss bull, and if his rights are infringed he is most likely to react violently. Females are herd inclined, this is an ancient trait for protection when in the wild. All males are essentially loners and are biologically consciously or unconsciously competing for females. Studies hve been done on bulls in the dairy industry where they had some hundreds of bulls on standbye awaiting their progeny test results.They had student on 24 hour watch studying their behaviour who found that cattle have no human recognition, even if you bucket rear a bull calf all its early life it will not recognise you when you approach it. And whether it kills you, or not, depends on how the bull is feeling at that moment. Bulls recognise how you move around them, not you as such. Movements should be slow and premeditated, no jerky or sudden movements, if your cattle are unsettled then move slowly into the middle of the yard, stand still for such time as it takes for the cattle to stop moving and turn and look at you.Then begin working with them and if they become frightened then stop again and let them settle.Never have young children around bulls no matter how quiet you believe the bull to be. They are unpredictable and can and will move very fast. There is an exciting and new project that scientist are working on at the moment where they think it is possible to predict bulls progeny test in their DNA. It is being developed for the Dairy industry for milk production at the moment.If it proves accurate then they will move into the beef industry. A bull is of no interest as such.It is his progeny that is of total importance. If this can be predicted in a calf it will speed up generation interval by three years and makebull selectionthat much easier and accurate. A final measure for bull buying. If you are selling grassland beef, then selecting bulls with the alleles for tenderness makes a very big difference in the eating quality of the beef. This was where the reputation for scottish beef came from in Angus. These allels appear to reside only in those cattle that retain their old scottish ancestory. Having eaten both beef the difference is considerable and will win you buyers that will stay with you forever.
Winter has arrived with snow covering the mountains that surround the valley that I overlook. We have gone from being dry to having a surplus of rain. Trouble is that it has been very cold and so we have had little or no Autumn growth But after that growthy Summer that we have had looks as though we will make it through the Winter with enough feed. As far as I know the farm has not begun feeding hay to the cows yet. Bull sales are in full swing and prices appear to be ahead of last year with a good demand for Angus bulls. The economics of mating yearling heifers
Surprisingly there is very little of it done in the Angus Stud industry over here. Some have tried it and most have given it up. I suspect that the major reason is that their heifers are late maturing and they can not get them in calf. Or they may have had calving problems because they used bulls with too high a birth weight, which case you can easily lose heifers by having to pull calves, that may injure the heifer and make her permanetly infertile. They may have decided that it is not worth the cost. There is also the mith that calving as yearlings stunts their growth, this is untrue as by three they have overcome any lack of size and you want a small cow who produces a big calf to be truly efficient. A smaller cow requires less energy to keep it warm during the Winter. For many years I mated the total drop of heifers working on the theory that they were the most modern part of our breeding programme and therefore superior. After about 10 years I thought that I had enough data to anaylsis what was happening, and I found that a poor performing heifer never left a decent calf. That the old method of culling the bottom 10% was the best. I also found that a heifers that had performed right out the top are often dry. This is a well known fact and thought to be because too much male hormone went through the placenta during pregnancy which was the reason for her extreme growth . Heifers like this are well worth trying as they may be just top performers. One of the effects of our programme is that all the cattle mature sexually earlier. When this occurs I have successfully mated them and got them in calf down to 280 kilos in weight but it is important that they be on a rising plane of nutrition after they conceive. After they are incalf keep them on just above even plane remember that the major growth in the foetus is in the last three weeks to calving. So make sure that they do not get too much feed at this time. It is vital that the minute that they calve you begin to feed them as well as you possible can. You can not feed them too much at this period because you are now aiming at getting them in calf next year, and that is the hardest part. Also you are aiming to make them produce as much milk as they possible can. If you manage them correctly then you have no trouble and if you do have trouble then probably you have made errors in your management or have a sire whose birth weight is too high. We do not use bulls whose birth weight is over +2 and preferable under.! So economic is mating yearling heifers that we have special heifer mating bulls, and we use our top yearling heifer’s bull each year as a sire When I began , I got into all sorts of problems with calving problems. I was primally selecting for growth at this stage and the bulls that I was using were too high in birth weight. Your scientist told me when I began, that doing what I was doing I would eventually get Dystokia ( calving problems ) until it became untenable. That is the reason why I began weighing at birth to see if your scientists were right, and what was happening to our birth weights. I found that they were climbing at a much slower rate then had been envisaged , but if I was going to mate yearling heifers I would have to have low birth weight bulls so it became one of our selection criteria. One of the problems is that high growth is correlated to high birth weight, but what has happened is that selection against high birth weight has resulted in shortening gestation period so bringing the birth weights down, this appears to be quite heretable 7%. We now pick low birth weight bulls to mate to our heifers and now have no trouble calving. It is possible to breed low birth weight and high growth bulls and these are called curve benders.
May 2010
Weather is continuing dry which is most unusual. The other surprising thing is that a lot of areas in NZ are being affected by drought. The Bottom of the South Island is having floods while Dairy farms in the North island are still dry, incredible diversity for such a small country . It is getting late enough if we are going to get growth. At least in the Wairarapa, where I am writing from, we had what must be one of the best Summers on record. The only problem we have had is that a plague of cluster flies. What a mess and it appears to have been general in the farming areas. I suppose you cannot have everything. Now we are back in drought with dairy cows dried off early and the grass from last Summer all but finished. Day after day of clear blue skies that everyone would enjoy if it was not so late. This month I am going to talk about Closed Herd Breeding. There are two sorts. Line breeding and Population Genetics and I suppose that they are near enough the same. Population genetics classes the whole herd as one big line. Where as I have always taken Line breeding to be a line within a population. A general discussion to begin with. The major problem in all closed herds is “Inbreeding Depression” taken too far, this can be serious, affecting both growth, fertility and variability. Depression is caused by too close a relationship between mated pairs. For this reason pedigrees must be kept, to avoid mating a bull to his mother or to half sibs. For those who have read my history, and see that I mated my original bull, with his own daughters ,and then with the resulting cross again, please don’t think that you can get away with this . This is NOT what you do It was a big mistake and was done out of complete ignorance My reason for doing it was that we had purchased what we classed as an exceptional bull and had been using him for 4 years. He was purchased as a mature bull and was phenotypically ideal for our bull market. I was constantly conscious that he was getting old and wished to make the maximum use of him before he became too old. That is the reason why I began to seek scientific help and while I waited it was the only way I knew to get as much use from the bull as possible Probably a larger number of bulls would be more desirable. We use 4 bulls per 100 cows. We do this to make sure we get the best bull each year. After each bull has been used then we examine his progeny test. If he is very good in all important traits, then we will recover him and use him for a second year in a different mob of cows. We try to give every bull an even lot of cows, in that they are the same average performance and the same mix of ages. We do this so that their progeny test is comparative and we know which has the best progeny test and how much he is ahead Line breeding, I take to mean taking a number of preferred type of animal , or a particular blood line and keeping it separate for the purpose of fixing body type or concentrating blood lines. The trouble with this is that your numbers tend to be too small and after a short period of time you cannot help using too closely related animals. Highly inbred animals are easily discernable to anyone who has had experience and appears to show up more in the males than the females. In this form of breeding the keeping of pedigrees is most important so that a careful watch can be kept on relationships The biggest problem in closed herd breeding is the long time it takes to overcome the Bulmar effect, approximately two generations. Then just after, recessive genes begin to appear and you are faced with overcoming them and that can take at least ten years. Most populations have genetic recessives latent in its genetic codes. If you buy bulls regularly this tends to hide these recessives because the likelihood of your purchased bull having the same recessive is remote. In buying bulls you do of course add any of his recessive genes into your herd plus any other problems that herd may have. Of course the purchased herd may have no recessives or troubles. It is not until you purchase a bull carrying the same recessive as you already have in your herd that you are heading for trouble.
April 2010
This has cost the sheep and beef cattle industry dearly numbers dropping steadily and there is no end in sight. Years of experience have shown us that all products are cyclic and what is going to happen when dairying hits another down cycle? There will not be neither the sheep nor the beef cattle to convert back. The short sited perversity of humans, Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it, so round and round we go. Always behind. Back to the beginning on Genetics Every animal has thousands of genes. Only about 20% are used in his code the rest are called junk genes and their purpose is unknown. Among the coded genes are some very high performing genes for what ever trait that you wish to improve or all the traits that you wish to improve. Every animal’s code is formed at the moment of conception and come half from his father and half from his mother and these genes are sampled purely at random. This means that in the normal mating of purchased sires, going to the normal cow, the sampling of genes tend to be average. In Pinebank we have been using the best bulls since 1965 so for three years nothing happened while the herd went through gestation weaning and yearling . Then we used the best yearling bulls of their year as sires. Next year we used the best yearling bulls who were by the best yearling bulls and we have been doing this for 46 years. Changing bulls every year building in those best performing genes. This system carries with it the cows in the population so both sexes are lifting in performance annually Every now and again at some unspecified time we get what we call an “outliner bull” This is a bull that progeny tests a long way ahead. All bulls go to a randomised selection of cows of all ages with the exception of its dam and half- sibs. This allows us to progeny test all the sires of that year and if a bull is well ahead in progeny test, we recover that bull and use it again on a different selection of cows. It is my belief that animals are very difficult to shift genetically and this is the only way that it can be done. I also believe that breeders who are prepared to use our bulls or semen would be able to avoid the known problems of, over- coming, recessives and the Bulmar effect , two known problems that hold up progress in the beginning of closed herd breeding. Remember the “Genetic saying that for every year that you use the same bull you remain static”, you are not going anywhere. So you can not keep using the same bull year after year there if you wish to make progress.
March 2010
The Passing Of Bull Pinebank 41/97. It is with much regret that we note the passing of bull 41/97. He must be one of the most successful beef bulls bred in New Zealand, in export semen, to date.
Order were received from Europe which could not be supplied for disease restrictions making all semen from New Zealand ineligible for any European country. He was used first in the Pinebank herd as a yearling and progeny tested well. He was then sold and went into commercial service for one year, as all our bulls do. His progeny test was enough for us to recover him and his subsequent physical development was impressive and led to the beginning of his semen collection. A number of his sons were used in the Pinebank herd but where he made his biggest impression was with his daughters. Many of which have become top cows and are making their mark in the forward progress of the Pinebank Stud. He was the favourite at the semen centre. Always behaving as a perfect gentleman and was always quiet and cooperative with plenty of character. They tell me that he will be missed. He first entered the Collection Centre in May 1999 and was first collected on 13th August 1999. His last collection was on May 18 .2009. During the period he remained in the Centre his semen remained of high quality never fluctuating, a tremendous recommendation of his fertility and constitution. His weight on entering the Centre was 1184 kilos (2604 lbs) on a frame score of 5.2. His weight quickly rose to 1222 kilos ( 2688 lbs). The Centre decided that he should be kept at 1170 kilos (2688 lbs ) for his health. The amount of feed required to keep him was negligible. As even the smell of hay would make him gain weight. He was the only bull on the centre that was not allowed ad-lib hay. Pinebank 41/97 was just a bull along the way and we know that each year the cattle will improve and that they will continue to do so. Pinebank keeps a small amount of semen from our most successful bulls in store. We use this semen in the years ahead to check the progress of the herd and sometimes to recover some characteristic that the bull had in particular strength. This year we have identified a 2 year old bull with a progeny test of +98 kilos and he is doing this on a 5.1 frame score This would be the highest testing pure New Zealand beef bull ever bred. This bull will be recovered this year and we will begin to run the tests that we do on any A.I.bull before we decide that he is good enough to be collected. These tests include making sure that the bull has at least 3 allels for tenderness, that he is completely structurally sound in all physical aspects, feet, jaw, testicles etc. If and when he passes all his tests then we will consider him for collection.
February 2010
This remarkable season continues with grass every where and not enough stock to eat it. In the last Newsletters I have been trying to explain how genes work and how they are the mainspring of the whole biological system. Genes are responsible for building the embryo into the total animal along the code built into them at the moment of conception. After you have designed a programme that does this. You must persist year after year and never give up and never change. Time then is the essence, so as time advances slowly, you add more and more of these superior genes to your population thus bringing the even better genes further forward. We invite those of you who can see the logic in what we are doing, to join us, to help build an Angus that is faster growing more fertile and more efficient on grass, as we go forward into the new millennium So if you wish to make maximum use of our programme, you use our latest sire over the daughters of any of our bulls If you take the time to go through our website, take out our programme, study it carefully you will see that the design covers all important aspects When I persuaded the scientist to help me and he drew up the present plan, I asked” why do we not breed like everyone else”. His reply was “ We do not know whether it works, and I suspect that it doesn’t, but is it not better to breed for 100 years doing something that we know works, than to arrive at the end of a lifetime of breeding and discover that it does not work”. I was convinced and could see the logic of the plan. What we are doing does work. Therefore then of course the most modern bull is always the best. It may not be in a desirable trait like growth it may be adding another 1% in fertility of his daughters. One of the biggest advantages that you will get out of using our semen is the cows performance. It is not only the bulls that improve yearly, but behind them improving in all the dam traits are the females. There is of course much to be learnt for us as well as you. It has become clear, because we have insisted that environment selects the type of animal that suits our or your grassland that if you wish to produce grassland beef, our sort of animal is what you will produce and I suspect that there is no other type. It appears that our phenotype is narrowing but our variation in performance is not. Those that grow faster, just appear to get more muscle and more bulk. This is a feature of handling climate extremes I suspect. This year we have identified a bull that has progeny tested at + 92 kilos at 600 days for growth. This we believe to be the highest performing pure New Zealand bred bull to date and it has been done on a frame score of 5.2. Happy and prosperous 2010 for all our readers
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