Blogging with the Ebor BPP
Blogging with the Ebor BPP - Beef CRC - Beef Genetic Technologies
| This blog has been established for the Ebor BPP members. It’s a snapshot of what’s happened and what has to happen. If you have any queries about the information posted here, please contact Cynthia Mulholland on 02 6773 3525 or click here to email Cynthia. |
 |
| So where is Ebor? |
 Ebor is a small village 88km east from Armidale along the Waterfall Way in the north-eastern part of New South Wales. Ebor has a post office, primary school, a pub, café and service station, however members of the Ebor BPP come from the surrounding area. Two members have breeding properties in coastal area as well as properties on the Tablelands. The others have properties in the Hernani, Ebor and Guyra areas. |
| A bit about the group |
 The group was first established as a Cost of Production group in 2004, however it has made the successful transition to a Beef Profit Partnership where additional opportunities are explored and acted upon.The group comprises 10 business representing over 10,000 head of cattle. |
| Our meeting held 16 December 2009 |
 Some very informative discussions took place at our December meeting. We learnt that the Guyra BPP carried out some blood testing in a number of herds for the Pestivirus with some very interesting results. This was of great interest to us and three members have agreed to have some blood samples from their heifers tested for Pestivirus antibodies. The results will be presented at our Feburary meeting at which Steve Eastwood, LHPA Senior DV Armidale will be in attendance.Individual members received their collated Cost of Production data for 2008/09 and healthy discussion followed. It was noted that when the 2008/2009 data is compared to the 2004/2005 data, kilograms of beef has increased by 63%, while the Cost of Production has only increased by 18%. Members were pleased with this result and are now looking at ways to improve once again on this result. A new member has since joined the group and submitted his data for inclusion in the current pool. |
| Trial and Control Experiments |
| Two BPP members have conducted on-farm evaluations/demonstrations on issues that are important to them. John Lean is evaluating selenium supplementation with the aim of measuring if there is a production response to selenium supplementation of young steers grazing improved pasture. Dick Page assessed average daily weight gain of steers treated with either a HGP or a long acting round worm drench, or a combination of both compared to untreated controls. Both John and Dick presented the results from their observations in these demonstrations and have now implemented some changes based on these observations. |
| Individual Focuses |
| Each of the members then identified their individual focuses for action over the next few months, with an action plan being developed for each focus. Members will record their progress on their focus and report this information back to members at the next meeting. |
| Next meeting |
| Wednesday, 3 March 2010. |
