Wagyu taste the turning point
AFTER eating wagyu beef for the first time, Northern NSW farmer Wal Perry knew he had to start breeding wagyu cattle.
Wal, along with his wife, Jen, and their son, Charlie, started producing wagyu genetics for the fullblood and first-cross markets in 2005, operating as Trent Bridge Wagyu.
And a focus on producing high-marbling, balanced cattle has led them to where they are now, having recently sold a cow for $200,000 – the second-best money realised for a female of all breeds in Australia.
The rising five-year-old cow, Trent Bridge K0034, was pregnancy-tested-in-calf and sold to GeneFlow from Tocumwal at the Elite Wagyu National Sale in Adelaide in May.
A daughter of Trent Bridge F0126, she had the highest marble score for a female on Breedplan with an estimated breeding value of +2.5.
Initially, Charlie said they weren’t sure if she would make $20,000.
“It was a complete shock,” Charlie said, given the previous best prices for their genetics were $35,000 for a female and $80,000 for a bull.
“We thought she’d be attractive to sell at that sale because of the focus on marbling, but we just didn’t think she would be that attractive.
“It is pretty exciting, especially considering she was by a home-bred bull and home-bred cow and was in calf to a Trent Bridge bull.”
HIGH STEAKS
UNTIL 1998, the Perrys were mostly sheep producers. But they then turned to cattle, breeding mostly angus and producing contract embryo cattle for other studs, including Wattletop Angus at Guyra.
Then they realised there was a good market for wagyu, and having achieved solid results, started breeding for themselves following the purchase of 80–90 embryos.
It was around that time the Perrys had their experience eating wagyu beef.
“We just couldn’t believe the taste,” Charlie said.
“A high-marbling wagyu does taste different.”
The Perrys now run 300 fullblood wagyu females and 300 angus females, which are used as F1 dams or embryo recipients on two properties totalling 1214ha at Aberfoyle and Ebor on the NSW Northern Tablelands.
They sell about 80 wagyu bulls a year as well as embryos and semen to other studs and commercial breeders.
Jen said their breeding goal was simple – to breed high-marbling cattle with reasonable growth, suitable for F1 producers.
A core part of their business has always been producing F1 progeny, with about 300 each year sold to JBS Australia at about 300kg and fed for 400–450 days.
“We’ve been unwavering on really high marbling, with 80 per cent of our herd in the top 10 per cent for marbling,” Charlie said.
In the past few years the Perrys have been scaling up their fullblood wagyu beef side of the business.
“There has been a bit of a shift in the market, with some people moving to higher content wagyu.”
The fullblood progeny are sold for live export to Japan.
This year, for the first time, they exported 85 live fullblood steers at 270kg to Japan.
While the Perrys previously backgrounded wagyu on pasture, due to current drought conditions they have been forced into supplementary feeding in a feedlot-type set-up.
WEIGH TO GO
CHARLIE said the F1 and fullblood wagyu were fed a full ration and they used a nutritionist, Darby Norris, to ensure they were getting the right balance of energy, protein and minerals.
They aimed for weight gains of between 800 grams and 1kg a day.
The cattle are weighed periodically, especially if the Perrys are feeding with different commodities, to ensure they continue to hit the right weight targets.
Something the Perrys are proud of is the fact they have embraced technology in breeding.
“There weren’t EBVs 15 years ago, breeding wagyu was all on names,” Charlie said.
Wagyu EBVs were introduced five years ago, with genomics following three years ago, and Charlie said the family invested “early and hard”.
“I watched the angus breed change over 30 years with aggressive adoption of EBVs. There was a school of thought in wagyu that it’s a bit of a dark art and it can only be done on bloodlines,” Wal said.
“That’s not our philosophy. We embraced the science and have seen improvement every year.”
To achieve higher accuracies within their herd, the Perrys genomic tested all their cows.
“Historically, if we had five full flush brothers they would be hard to distinguish between, but with genomics you can tell the difference,” Charlie said.
“The caveat is genomics are only 60 per cent accurate at the moment, but we’d rather be 60 per cent accurate than not at all.”
While the Perrys use Breedplan to select animals, they also place a strong emphasis on phenotype.
“There is still value in looking at commercial cattle pressures,” Charlie said.
To make use of the elite genetics, the Perrys introduced in-vitro fertilisation to their herd for the first time last year, achieving a 72 per
cent conception rate.
Charlie said they had semen from Macquarie Y408 and Coates Itoshigenami G113, which was valuable and rare, so IVF allowed them to use one straw of semen with eggs from eight cows, resulting in 22 pregnancies.
“When semen is the constraint, it is a good alternative,” he said.
Trent Bridge makes use of genetics expert Greg Popplewell to help determine the best joinings.
Jen plays a big role in the genetics side of the business and the family provides Greg with the details on what bulls and semen they want to use and it is “mixed and matched” with the best females.
Females are all artificially inseminated, with heifers joined at 15 months, which helps with a tight calving.
Charlie said they aimed to produce “good consistent” animals and they tried not to compromise on marbling, phenotype and feeding.
That means they also try to ensure their genetics are being used to produce the best possible progeny.
Charlie said when they sold bulls to the F1 market, they talked with their clients about what cattle they were crossing them with and offered advice if needed, because if a processor bought the cattle out of a Trent Bridge bull, and “they don’t kill well, that is of interest to us”.
“We want our clients to be successful and it is in all of our best interests to have good relationships with them,” he said.
DATA COUNTS
CHARLIE said there was no substitute for carcass data, and they had developed a sire-identification program with JBS Australia and Andrews Meats.
The arrangement sees Trent Bridge supply JBS with straws of semen each year for three years. In return, the Perrys get all carcass data back, which allows them to identify valuable bulls.
They have been able to identify a bull that has a marble score average of +8.8 in F1s.
“It is expensive to feed them, so it is important to find animals that perform with consistency,” Charlie said.
“When you trade cattle, your interest in them usually stops when they leave the farm, but because we feed them for 400 days, when we sell the F1s we get feedback on the year before.”
While prices for F1 cattle have come back in recent years, as numbers reach maturity, the Perrys believe there will always be a market for them.
“It’s a rock-solid product,” Charlie said.
They also believe there will continue to be a premium paid for F1 cattle as strong demand from Asia continues.
“Prices are 10–20 per cent over an angus steer.”
As the interest in wagyu continues to grow in Asian nations, Wal said wagyu was becoming well-recognised domestically and they had to think more consumer-focused.
“By and large if bred well and fed well, the customer is saying wagyu is better.”
It means thinking about meat quality and how it appears on a customer’s plate.
“Again it comes down to marbling,” Wal said.