Australian breeder favours data input to beef up profits

Successful beef breeding is about more than just developing highly productive animals, Australian specialist Tom Gubbins told the latest Quality Meat Scotland international podcast.

“We also need to identify what drives the economics of the market we are targeting and how to fit that into the animals and the environment they are in,” he said, speaking as director of Te Mania Angus, a breeding data business based in New South Wales.

“We’ve identified 25 traits that have economic importance, from the more obvious growth rate and fertility requirements, to foot structure and eye muscle areas.

“By using the data, you can modify animals to what’s important to your market, capitalising on the benefits and suppressing the negatives to boost the profitability of your business.”

Highlighting the challenges and assets of beef farming in Scotland in comparison to Australia, Mr Gubbins also recognised the need to respond to the growing environmental lobby.

“Provenance is a big thing for us in Australia, for restaurants and consumers, but in particular now for the genotypic data on greenhouse gases, and how it correlates with net feed intake,” he said.

“European and US shareholders in the big corporate farms are increasingly interested in investing in companies that are caring for the environment and that is becoming more and more important in our decision-making.

“We need to address the perception of GHGs as an industry to give us social licence.”

While agreeing that, at first glance, when you look at the amount of gas that comes out of an animal and compare it to our global problem, it looks bad.

However, he added that many things were often not taken into consideration.

“The carbon cycle of a cow is around 12 years, whereas the cycle of the carbon that comes from the exhaust of a car is 300 million years,” he said.

“Ruminants are also fantastic at converting food that is not fit for human consumption into a high-quality protein that humans can eat safely.

“We’re going to learn a lot about the role of the ruminants in feeding the population over the years.”

The Gubbins family have been focusing on genetic improvement since 1928, based on their Te Mania Angus herd, which originated in New Zealand.

They currently have 1800 females and bulls across 2700 hectares in Malt Lake, and, as well as an annual bull sale, lease bulls as part of their Progeny Test Programme, which now has 45 herds across South Australia and NSW.

We’re going to learn a lot about the role of the ruminants in feeding the population

EXPERTISE: Beef specialist Tom Gubbins is a director of Te Mania Angus, which provides proven genetics to build high quality and profitable breeding herds across Australia.