Te Mania Angus, the nucleus herd for Team Te Mania, is receiving thousands of Breedplan suitable records. This has connected Te Mania Angus objectively with commercial reality.
“Team Te Mania members are real commercial cattle people who are at the coal face. Their feedback shapes the nucleus herd, to ensure its focus is commercially relevant and profitable. This connects us, through contracts, to commercial cattle breeding” said Tom Gubbins
“Through this commercial application, all the selection pressure is used wisely to increase economic value, rather than selection pressure being placed on traits that do not make the farmer a profit.
Our chicken and pig breeding competitors have been achieving greater genetic gain, through their performance recording for years. As a consequence, they have been taking market share from beef producers.”
The carcase records are giving us valuable information with is helping to increase the accuracy of carcase EBV’s. It is also telling us, very specifically, what the profitability of the steers are for the supply chain and what we need to fine tune in our breeding programme to make it even more profitable.
We have a very rare opportunity to be able to breed very specific animals for the commercial producers needs.
While the structures of Team Te Mania have all been designed by Te Mania Angus, the data collection itself, is all now possible because of Rob Wyld’s Sapien Technology.
Cloud-based animal recording software is keeping “all of life” identity of animals, and enables us to match the final product with the original birth records.
The commercial data collected by Team Te Mania members is submitted to Breedplan for analysis, which makes up the EBVs (Estimated Breeding Values) and $ Indexes, which gives producers a lot of information to assist with selecting the right bull for their herd.
Tuwharetoa Regent D145 has been the most extensively tested sire on Angus Group Breedplan, with over 5,000 progeny analysed. Tuwharetoa Regent was purchased by Te Mania Angus in 2010, and stands out in the Angus breed as a trait leader for 600D Growth, Carcase Weight and Marbling.
Breedplan have developed a new Angus Breeding Index, which estimates the genetic differences between animals in net profitability per cow joined in a typical commercial self replacing herd.
In the Te Mania Angus Autumn Bull Sale, on March 4th, the 155 bulls have an average Angus Breeding Index value of $122 – which is in the top 10% of the breed.
Tom said “this result endorses the testing and concentration on balanced commercial genetics which Te Mania Angus have now focussed on, since beginning performance recording in the 1970’s”.
