Maternal Productivity - southern
Maternal Productivity - southern - Beef CRC - Beef Genetic Technologies
| "Beef CRC is looking to enhance production performance by simultaneously improving maternal productivity, feed efficiency and carcass attributes." |
 The Beef CRC Maternal Productivity research program is focused on the contribution females make to the productivity of the beef enterprise.The program is aiming to improve breeding herd efficiency (kg calf/MJ energy per cow and calf unit) by an average by 0.5 per cent per annum in at least 50 per cent of specialist beef enterprises in temperate Australia each year from 2012. The program was set up to answer some major industry questions. Currently some beef producers are concerned that influencing body composition (e.g. selecting for improved feed efficiency or increased yield) may have a negative impact on the efficiency of the breeding herd, especially in variable nutritional environments. The impact of changing cow body composition will become more important in the future as commercial cow-calf operations are forced into more marginal and variable environments. In contrast, it is anticipated that there will be a trend for greater intensification of growing and finishing systems (e.g. lot feeding, high-performance pasture systems) in order to meet demanding market requirements for end-product yield and quality. Under this scenario the beef industry requires resilient maternal genotypes (cows) and production systems that can efficiently utilise variable feed resources. Females will need to efficiently store and mobilise body tissue as required while also having the potential to produce progeny that meet high quality market targets. The industry currently lacks the knowledge to effectively balance these potentially conflicting requirements. This research is designed to bridge the knowledge gap and involves two cattle projects being run simultaneously. These being an industry herd component and a research station component. |
| Industry herds |
 The industry herd project involves ongoing performance recording on approximately 7000 Breedplan recorded heifers comprising both Angus and Hereford from conception through to weaning of their second calf. The females will have live weight, hip height and body condition score measures as well as ultrasound scans for eye muscle area and fatness (Rib, P8 and IMF) four times over a two year period. This will enable the amount of body tissue accumulated or mobilised depending on feed supply (pasture through the year) and energy demand (pregnancy and lactation) to be quantified. Detailed reproduction and culling records will also be kept. Heritabilities for possible new traits like mobilisation of reserves and estimation of genetic correlations between cow traits (days to calving, milk production and culling records) and young body composition (fat and muscle) and structural assessment scores will be calculated. |
| Research station herds |
 The research station project being run at Vasse WA and Struan SA is intensive and involves raising females under controlled stocking rates to provide information on feed efficiency as well as more detailed measures of reproductive performance. All of the measurements taken on industry herds will also be recorded on experimental cattle on research stations. Females that are genetically divergent in trial NFI or rib fat EBVs will be run under either a high or low stocking rate such that each research station will have animals that are either high or low for fat and trail NFI EBVs under each of the stocking regimes. The project will also measure group weekly feed intake. This will enable differences in maternal efficiency (kg calf weaned / MJ energy consumed by cow and calf) to be calculated for the different groups of animals under different management regimes. The data from the research stations will also be utilized to enable the simulation of ‘what if’ scenarios. This allows the effects of selection for different traits such as increased muscling, decreased feed intake and altered fat distribution on maternal productivity in varied environments to be determined. |
| The Beef CRC has already gathered some preliminary results from this project. All the information has been gathered into a publication called the Maternal Journal |
| Want further information about the Maternal Productivity Project? Here are some useful contacts. |
| Wayne Pitchford, Program Leader (08) 8303 7642, or wayne.pitchford@adelaide.edu.au |
| John Graham, Project Leader (03) 5573 0908 or, john.graham@dpi.vic.gov.au |
| Ian Carmichael, SARDI (08) 8207 7922, or Carmichael.ian@saugov.sa.gov.au |
| Jeisane Accioly, DAFWA (08) 9753 0333, or jaccioly@agric.wa.gov.au |
