Dear Members,
The Herefords Australia National Youth Expo was a fantastic event with over 140 exhibitors taking part across the 4 day event. This included a team from New Zealand which was great to see. It was a great balance between education programs, commercial information and the judging, handling and showing competitions. What continues to be the highlight for me is the outstanding generosity shown by our members to support the youth. Over 60 ballot animals were provided for the youth to ensure that every entrant had an animal to handle. Some of those animals had also been at the QLD youth show the week before. That level of support from our members ensures that the next generation of Hereford breeders have such a positive experience and will return that support in the years to come. Thank you to all involved!
I recently attended the JBS Great Southern producer awards and forum. Herefords Australia sponsored the forum session titled “Under the Hide”. I thought this was very appropriate for the way forward for the breed. The session featured a MSA grading demonstration, carcase boning demonstration and then 4 chefs broke down the cuts into meal dishes they serve at their restaurants around the country. There were 500 producers at the event and our support of the session went to the 4000 JBS Farm Assured suppliers across the country. We will continue to work with JBS and their Hereford Boss brand.
We also saw some fantastic results for Hereford cattle in the Ekka Paddock to Palate competition, Casino Beef Week carcase comp and strong entries for the Lardner Park steer trial. These highlights support the great work that is happening in the breed and the outcomes that the breed is delivering. I now have received over 20,000 carcase records since I started the MSA data collation program. Please keep the data coming in and I will report back next month on what that data is telling us. This will be an ongoing initiative and don’t hesitate to keep the data flowing through.
The key things that are driving the MSA index are weight for age and marbling. When you combine that with our key productivity advantages – fertility, longevity, growth, finishing ability on grass and grain, there is plenty to work with and a lot to promote and get behind.
Planning for HAL involvement in BEEF 2024 5th to 11th of May in Rockhampton is well underway. I have been keeping a close eye on opportunities for Hereford and Hereford cross cattle to be part of the national carcase competition. HERE is a link the details that includes the specifications and a list of collaborating processors. This gets updated as information comes through but you can see that a number of dates are yet to be set. One opportunity is to participate in the Beef Spectacular Feedback Trial hosted by Teys where the entries can also be nominated for BEEF2024 – details can be found HERE.
