Chief Executive Officer’s Report 2025

There is no doubt that 2025 was an interesting year for the Australian beef industry. Over the last 12 months the sentiment within the industry has been reasonably positive. Industry surveys have shown that majority of producers are either fairly positive or very positive about the outlook for the industry outweighing negative sentiment. More than half of beef producers indicate they would like to keep their herds the same size with a few more producers wanting to increase their herds in comparison to those wanting to decrease. This indicates an overall intention to slowly increase the national herd.

If only seasonal conditions across the country would go in our favour!

The most recent estimates are that the national herd sits at around 28 million head comprising of around 19.2 million breeding cows and heifers. So what does this mean this mean for Hereford breeders?

The estimates of the number of Hereford cattle in the country varies significantly between surveys, but the most recent estimates suggest that there are between 830,000 and 1.1 million Hereford breeding cows and heifers. From Herefords Australia’s registration statistics, it appears that we are currently producing enough Hereford bulls each year to service a cow herd of this size with a reasonable number of surplus bulls depending on culling percentages.

With only small increases likely in the national herd indicated and the season putting further constraints on growth it leaves one option to increase the number of Hereford bulls sold, and that is crossbreeding.

In October I was fortunate to be able to attend the World Hereford Conference hosted by the American Hereford Association in Kansas City, Missouri. Around 800 delegates from more than 20 countries attended the conference. Our friends from AHA were excellent hosts and put on a great event that was well worth attending.

There is significant enthusiasm around Hereford cattle in the United States with demand for bulls for use in cross breeding programs. Many were suggesting that between 80 and 85% of Hereford bulls were being sold into crossbreeding programs. In addition to this there is good acceptance of Hereford content cattle in U.S. feedlots.

We have seen early signs of similar trends starting to emerge in the Australian market with reports of Hereford genetics being used over both Angus and Bos Indicus based cow herds with great effect to improve market suitability. There have also been reports of feed lotters looking to source Hereford steers suitable to feeding on for the EU market.

I encourage all Hereford producers to think about the appropriate accreditations and vaccination programs to ensure that your cattle are eligible for as many of these market opportunities as possible.

It is important to understand that Herefords Australia’s role in marketing is to increase market share for Hereford cattle. It is then the responsibility of each stud to tell their own story and market their genetics to prospective buyers. I encourage all of you to read the article about Building a Brand in the 2026 issue of the Herefords Australia magazine.

One significant development in 2025 was the inclusion of the Hereford data from the Southern Multibreed Project into our Hereford BREEDPLAN analysis. The Southern Multibreed project has given us access to important reference population data for the full spectrum of traits including hard to measure traits such as fertility, carcase, eating quality and feed intake. Herefords Australia are the first breed to include this important industry dataset in a genetic evaluation and we will benefit from improved accuracy for Genomic EBVs for these traits.

The Future Leaders and Breeders event for 2025 was a great success with tours of Windy Station, Killara Feedlot and Teys Tamworth highlighting the role of Hereford genetics across the entire supply chain. We truly appreciate the support of each of these businesses as well as our major sponsor Bendigo Bank and event sponsors Shine at Agribusiness and Auctions Plus. This year’s event was sold out, so I would recommend getting in early for the 2026 event.

The development of GenSELECT has also been an important milestone for the year. GenSELECT provides a suite of genomic tests for commercial breeders. It has been developed by AGBU and ABRI with Herefords Australia’s support. It will allow commercial cattle producers to access genomic products to improve selection decisions for heifers and steers as well as accessing a profile product that allows them to benchmark their herd against the rest of the Hereford population. GenSELECT will be available through Neogen.

I would like to thank the Herefords Australia staff for their commitment and hard work throughout the year. I would also like to thank the board and membership for their support as we work towards implementing our strategic plan and growing market share for the Hereford breed.

I look forward to working closely with all of you in 2026.

Regards,

Hamish Chandler

Chief Executive Officer