Tom Gubbins, co-principal of Te Mania Angus has been awarded The Boehringer Howard Yelland Beef Industry Award for 2017 at the Marcus Oldham Rural Leadership Dinner recently
The award is presented by The Australian Beef Industry Foundation (ABIF) and Marcus Oldham College with the support of Boehringer Ingelheim Australia (formerly Merial Australia).
This award is in recognition of Howard W Yelland, a pioneer and leader in the Australian Beef Industry through his championing of objective selection and performance recording for beef cattle.
The Howard Yelland Award seeks to recognise individuals who have given service to the Beef Industry “above and beyond” their normal role.
Selection criteria addressed in the nominations included:
- Extent of contribution to the Australian beef industry
- Recognition of this contribution both nationally and internationally
- Leadership role as a change agent
- Contribution above and beyond normal role in the industry
Since 1987 there have been 32 recipients of the award.
“Tom has been at the fore front of leading the genetic development, on farm management strategy for not only the Angus breed but the whole of the Australian beef industry through his willingness to provide access to the information and technology developed by Te Mania Angus in its commitment to objective measurement as a key to genetic improvement.” John Gunthorpe highlighted
The Team Te Mania progeny testing program has brought together the data from 40 progeny test herds across Australia with many thousands of carcase data collected and progeny recorded on Angus Group Breedplan.
“Data collection has progressed dramatically from the time Howard Yelland walked his bulls to the local railway station to weigh them at the railway yard scales and manually recorded the data in note books – cloud based data collection and management is now a strong feature of the Te Mania Angus strategy with the development and promotion of new and innovative data capture and management software in conjunction with industry.” Continued John.
“Apart from managing a herd of over 2,000 breeders Tom has found time to contribute both this time and his expertise to ensure that the wider industry is aware of the benefits from genetic selection – as a key note speaker both nationally and internationally Tom is recognised for his enthusiasm and commitment regarding beef cattle, genomics, biological farming and data capture.” John highlighted.
“Tom also brings his expertise to many industry organisations in his role on the AGBU Consultative Committee, member of the Australian Angus Technical Committee, MLA National Livestock Genetics Task Force, Trans-Tasman Cow productivity program and as a member of the recently formed Zanda McDonald Award Committee,” said John
“It’s not just a matter of breeding highly productive cattle, the environment in which those cattle are produced must be matched to their productivity. Environmental management is a key component of the Te Mania program with implementation of sustainable grazing and pasture management programs to match the genetic productivity of the breeding herd” said John.
The citation for the 2017 Boehringer Howard Yelland Beef Industry Award is as follows:
In recognition of his contribution as a significant and multifaceted contributor to not only the Angus sector but the Australian beef Industry by being in the fore front of the adoption of “new age technology” to develop and promote objective measurement and genetic selection as the basis for the genetic destiny, market performance, long term viability and security of the beef cattle industry.
His commitment to providing a strong connection between seed stock producers, geneticists, researchers and technologists both in Australia and internationally has ensured that the genetic evaluation systems for livestock production in this country continue to be placed at the forefront of world’s best practice.
Tom Gubbins would like to acknowledge that this award goes to the entire family of Te Mania Angus, as it is a group effort by all.
