Acknowledging excellence through scientific innovation

The Agricultural Research Council recently presented its 45th instalment of its annual National Beef Performers Awards, which recognises outstanding achievements across seven categories of beef cattle performance and production. Farmer’s Weekly is the proud sponsor of the National Best Elite Cow category, the winners of which are presented below.

This award category only considers actual performance data of participating cows. Participating cows should exhibit exceptional reproduction figures and other economically important traits, such as maternal ability and pre-weaning growth rate (weaning weight). This award category is also contested, as in the past, among cows across all breeds and only one cow per breed will be crowned as the top female of each participating breed. Our valued partner, Farmer’s

Weekly, has been the sole sponsor of this award category for 45 years in a row, which in itself is indeed praiseworthy.

Both registered and commercial cows are eligible to participate and specific qualification criteria include age at first calving; the average inter-calving period; days since last calving; the completeness of records for weaning weights; performance records (breeding values) regarding wean direct and wean maternal; birth maternal (where available) and the number of calves with reliable weaning weights.

For commercial cows where no BLUP breeding values are available, the criteria evaluated include, in addition to criteria already mentioned, the weaning index of the cow’s calves individually as well as for all calves weaned.

Additional criteria used to identify the best performing cow per breed include breeding values for birth and weaning; average efficiency index (if available); approval ratio (percentage of her progeny approved for registration by the relevant breeders’ society); reproduction index and the percentage of performance tested calves.

The table below lists the 19 ARC National Best Elite Cows with their respective performance figures, while the details of the owners of these cows are included in the photo captions.