Estimated breeding values (EBVs) remain a “black box” for farmers, but scientists are working to find out more about beef and sheep genetics, said Mike Goddard, from Australia’s University of Melbourne and Victoria.

He talked to about 100 stud and commercial farmers, as well as beef industry stalwarts, at a Beef Expo celebratory breakfast, in Feilding, last week reports The Manawatu Standard.Professor Goddard said EBVs work, but there are unknown factors.”We know how EBVs work. But the genes that contribute to them – we don’t know.”He said there were many genes that contribute to factors such as growth rate, meat yield, and fertility, for example, but only one for colour.As if that is not enough of a problem, when it comes to beef breeds, markers need to be relevant across many breeds.

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Big black angus bulls dominated the national cattle stud sales at Beef Expo this week. More than $750,000 changed hands at the sales with almost half of that being paid for angus bulls. The two top sales of $26,000 and $25,000 were angus bulls and, to round the expo off, the breed featured in the steak of origin contest to find the nation’s tastiest beef steaks.

A steak from a limousin-angus heifer raised by sisters Kathy Child and Yvonne Hill, of Whangarei, was judged the overall winner while an angus steak from Chef’s Choice, Whanganui, won the overall best of brand section for retail and wholesale butcheries. Angus also took out the first three places in the best of British breeds section. The four-day expo in Feilding is a shop window for many breeders who will be hoping to lure breeders and commercial farmers to their on- farm sales over the next two months reports The Dom Post.

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Nervous and aggressive cattle are a pain in the wallet reports The Weekly Times. That is the finding of a study presented recently to the Midwest American Society of Animal Science, in Des Moines, Iowa. Gary Fike, beef cattle specialist for the Certified Angus Beef brand in the US, said docile cattle in a feedlot graded premium choice and prime at more than double the rate of nervous to very aggressive cattle. Docility in the feedlot paid off with better performance, improved carcass merit and reduced morbidity and treatment costs, Mr Fike said.

Data was collected on nearly 50,000 cattle from 18 Iowa feedlots over eight years, to 2009. Using a six-point scoring system, calves were grouped into three categories – docile (DC), restless (R) and nervous to very aggressive (NVA). Calves in the study had similar arrival weights, but the DC and R calves were on average 10 days younger than the NVA calves. DC calves made up for their age, gaining 1.45kg/day compared with NVAs 1.36kg and outweighing them by 17.69kg in final liveweight.

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AS many as half of the Australia’s sheep producers are playing with danger, researchers now say – and the results could well prove tough to swallow reports The Land. They claim that in the pursuit of lean lamb, many stud breeders have inadvertently culled intramuscular fat – the key trait for tenderness – raising the risk of a consumer backlash. Stud breeders and commercial producers were taken aback by this revelation, announced at the final Sheep Co-operative Research Centre grower update in Glen Innes last Wednesday.

Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) sheep geneticist, Dr Alex Ball, Armidale, told the gathering the correlation between fat covering (PFAT) and intramuscular fat (IMF) was far greater than anybody had imagined – in fact, three times greater than the link in beef.“Up until three months ago we (the industry) didn’t know what it was doing (to tenderness),” he said. The data had come straight out of the sire nucleus (comprising every bloodline available to commercial producers), half of which fell within the dry-eating-to-tough territory.

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Sheep breeders will be able to DNA-test lambs at birth with a world-first procedure to show which animals will be the most valuable for farmers. AgResearch scientist John McEwan said the test would be available to commercial breeders in the next few months. It had taken more than $2 million to develop reports Stuff. Although some genetic testing of sheep was already done by commercial breeders, that testing gave breeders only predictions about a small number of character traits, Mr McEwan said.

Current tests allowed breeders to predict a sheep’s future muscle growth, but the new test would accurately show from birth everything from the sheep’s future growth rate, to its resistance to disease. The test would also give a complete genetic picture of individual animals, allowing breeders to see every genetic variation and mutation in the sheep’s genetic make-up.

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A potential breakthrough in livestock semen sex sorting may add hundreds of millions of dollars to NZ’s dairy exports reports Stuff. Androgenix, a new company based at Auckland University’s Institute of Biotechnology, has been developing for almost three years a cost-effective process for sexing semen.

Co-founder and part-time chief executive Brent Ogilvie said he’s hoping to  confirm Androgenix’s technology works this year. If successful, Androgenix will be able to offer semen sex-sorting technology to  livestock insemination companies that is relatively low cost but with high fertilisation rates  two problems that have plagued others attempting to control the sex of livestock born.

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A new genetic product, or SNP Chip, aimed at assisting sheep breeders and Angus beef breeders with molecular breeding values, has been launched in the United States and will be available in NZ later this year. The products are being commercialised by Pfizer Animal Health.

Sharl Liebergreen, the company’s technical service regional manager, said the technology was leveraged off the bovine genome sequencing, which allowed geneticists initially to use 50,000 DNA markers at once but would soon grow to 500,000 markers. By comparison, the dairy industry was using 500,000 gene markers reports The ODT.

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A new genetic tool that could be as revolutionary for sheep breeding as computer technology has been, should be available to farmers from early next year. SNP Chips was the result of genetic sequencing of the sheep genome and allowed researchers to understand the effects of small genes rather than just the large genes currently possible reports The ODT. “It allows you to get better predictions of what the actual worth of an animal is,” AgResearch Invermay senior animal genomics scientist John McEwan said. Cumulatively, small genes could add up to 50% to 95% of genetic variation between animals, he said.

In the dairy industry, the two large artificial insemination companies – LIC and CRV Ambreed New Zealand – had already adopted SNP Chips, but Mr McEwan said sheep farmers in general wanted to see how others adapted it. Historically, each of the top 40 bulls used in artificial insemination programmes would have be rated following testing of 80 to 100 daughters, by which stage the average age of each sire was five years.

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As antler weights continue to rise in NZ , there was no disappointing the 50 competitors that attended the 2009 National Velvet and Trophy Antler Competition. The competition was held on Wednesday at Ascot Park and attracted the industry’s best, with some good velvet and hard antler weights reports The Southland Times.

Organiser Peter Allan said velvet weights had doubled in each deer age-group since the 1990s and that was reflected in competition. It was former organiser David Stevens who drew much attention on the night, winning the 5-year-old red section with antlers weighing in at 12.3kg. “The heaviest ever, I believe,” Mr Stevens said.

Ranfurly farmers John and Mary Falconer’s set also placed well in the competition, taking second spot in the open section at 13.68kg. Bill and Jill Oliver, of Christchurch, won the open section with a set weight of 14.60kg.

Researchers aiming to control or even eliminate a disease in farm livestock which costs the nation up to $88 million a year are probing where some genetic types of animal are particularly susceptible or resistant reports Stuff.  A micro-organism with the tongue-twisting scientific label of Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis — also known as MAP — causes Johne’s disease, a chronic wasting intestinal disease in a range of animals, including cattle, deer and sheep.

Johnes is spread by the faeces of infected animals and blocks the absorption of food, causing them to waste away and die. Bacteria infect the walls of the intestines, causing a malabsorption syndrome, protein loss from the inflamed bowel, anaemia, and the collapse of the immune system. It can not only mimic other health problems such as chronic parasitism, trace element deficiency and poor nutrition, but also interfere with tests for bovine tuberculosis.

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