Meat & Wool Innovation media release

What has Happened to the Queen of Pasture Quality?

Russell Priest – Meat & Wool Innovation Beef Genetics Co-ordinator

During late March, I was fortunate to be involved in the Angus and Hereford breed herd tours around Hawkes Bay and Gisborne respectively. The tours covered territory I had never frequented before and I was amazed at the large areas of hill country pasture, which had “got away” from the stock and were rank and of poor quality. To add to my concern, the Spring and early Summer had not been particularly favourable for pasture growth, so I can’t imagine what the situation would have been like if the seasonal conditions had been normal. Much of this hill country was being grazed by finishing cattle and in particular bulls. They may have achieved target liveweights during part of the Spring/ Summer period, but they certainly would not have been on the feed they were grazing when I saw them.

While finishing stock, and bulls in particular, have the ability to achieve very high rates of liveweight gain and profitability, they can only do this on a diet of “chocolates”. The moment they are forced to “clean up” and eat poor quality feed, this high performance and profitability “goes out the back door”. Maintaining quality pasture with finishing stock inevitably involves adequate subdivision and of course water. On much of this country subdivision would certainly be possible, however provision of water would be the limiting factor. I strongly suspect finishing stock, on such extensive hill country, would achieve disappointing profitability and certainly not the levels often quoted.

This then begs the question, what has happened to the humble breeding cow on this country? I suspect many farmers have been “conned” into believing finishing stock are more profitable in such an environment and as a result she has been “relieved of her duties”.

Extensive country, where further subdivision is capital intensive and provision for water is very difficult, is I believe the domain of the breeding cow. She not only produces a very saleable product (a calf) but also maintains pasture quality for younger, growing stock and even breeding ewes (enabling them to maintain/increase their bodyweight ready for tupping) by acting as a mower, a baler, a hayshed and a mechanism for feeding out (she does this at no cost – you all know what this costs doing it mechanically). She also avoids the need to increase debt through capital expenditure on subdivision and water.

In comparing the profitability of finishing operations and a breeding cow enterprise, a dollar value should be attributed to the latter to recognise the value added to other livestock enterprises, through maintaining pasture quality. Alas, in general, it is not and so the breeding cow suffers, in the profitability stakes, simply because it is too hard to attribute figures to this function.

Enterprise selection so often involves a “horses for courses” approach. Extensive summer-moist hill country, often characterised by large paddocks, is custom-made for breeding cows, particularly if they are calved during the spring flush. Certainly, if the hill country has areas of easy contour that can be readily subdivided and watered, there is an ideal opportunity to run finishing stock. However it is a ‘big ask’ to expect this class of stock to perform at optimum growth rates under extensive conditions, when faced with declining pasture quality. Often a mix of breeding cows and finishing stock gives the best results, which is the conclusion many of those, who blindly went out of cows and in to finishing stock, have discovered.

New technologies, in conjunction with EBVs, should enable the efficiency of the breeding cow to be improved through genetic selection. Identifying and breeding from animals with low Net Feed Intake EBVs , that have Mature Weight EBVs significantly below their 600-Day Weight EBVs and using gene marker-assisted selection technology are strategies that can be/will be able to be used to achieve this.

Summary

Media Release

What has Happened to the Queen of Pasture Quality?