We often talk about the benefits of running Hereford cattle.
The widely accepted benefits include great temperament, high fertility, good weight for age with early turnoff, excellent quality product, low maintenance requirements and good ability to maintain performance under tough conditions.
The combination of these traits makes the modern Hereford both a profitable and sustainable choice for Australian beef producers.
However, it is often useful to take time to look at the available information to ensure that we can substantiate these claims and also to understand how we continue improving.
The carcase feedback data that Herefords Australia have collated over the last few years helps us do both of these things.
We have already used the Meat Standards Australia (MSA) index for grass–fed Hereford cattle to demonstrate that the average Hereford sits in the top 25% of the Australian industry for eating quality outcomes.
Further analysis of this data also gives us answers about how to unlock the next level of performance for the breed.
It is important for us to recognise that we cannot rest on our laurels knowing that Hereford cattle currently perform well as the business environment that we operate in continues to change and other breeds that we compete against for market share continue to evolve.
Further analysis of the grass-fed carcase feedback data highlights the importance of weight for age in Hereford cattle being able to exceed industry benchmarks for MSA Index.
The combination of ossification (an indicator of an animal’s physiological age) and carcase weight explains between 65 and 70% of the variation in MSA Index values.
Good early growth rates plays a big role in being able to turn cattle off at young ages but still meet industry targets for carcase weight.
Additionally, this is also one of the biggest drivers for sustainable beef production. Maintaining selection pressure on early growth traits will continue to be an important driver for Hereford breeders.
While the data shows that vast majority of Hereford cattle are grading very well, this further analysis has also shown that MSA Marble Score currently explains approximately 10% of the variation of MSA Index for grass-fed Hereford cattle.
Stronger focus on improving this trait is likely to be the best tool available to Hereford producers to take the breed’s eating quality from above average to exceptional.
Of the total dataset for grass-fed carcase records held by Herefords Australia there are approximately 200 animals that have individual sire details available.
Figure 1 shows the impact of sire IMF EBV on progeny MSA Marble Scores. Each colour shows the IMF EBV range that the sires fall into with the bars on the chart representing the proportion of progeny by those sires that fall into each marble score range.
Although this is real industry data collected across different groups of animals it clearly demonstrates that bulls with higher IMF EBVs have progeny with higher MSA Marble Scores.
Importantly they also have fewer progeny with very low MSA Marble Scores that are likely to give consumers poorer eating quality outcomes.
By selecting bulls with higher IMF EBVs we can minimise the number of animals with MSA Marble Scores of 250 and below.
The same principle can be applied to all traits that the Hereford breed is well known for. Although the average performance for the breed is good there is also a wide range of performance that we can take advantage of to continue improving and taking the breed forward.
Irrespective of the traits that we are wanting to make improvement to the same drivers influence how fast we can make progress.
Choosing the best animals to use in our breeding program, how accurately we can choose which are the best, and how quickly we can introduce new genes into the herd are all key drivers of our rate of improvement.
To really unlock the next level of performance for Hereford cattle we need to get the balance right between each of these components.
The accuracy of these choices is the part that we aim to improve through the use of BREEDPLAN EBVs. Higher accuracy is directly related to faster rates of genetic progress because it means that we are making the right choice more frequently.
High accuracy EBVs are dependent on having access to good quality performance records either collected directly on the candidates that we want to select from or as part of a reference population so that we can then rely on genomic testing.
Either way the Hereford breed needs to continue collecting more data to improve the accuracy of EBVs and enable better rate of progress.
While most breeders are familiar with the process for capturing performance records for basic weight traits the process for capturing further records for traits such as fertility and carcase traits is not quite as obvious.
For more information about capturing information on these traits please see the articles Fertility Traits and Capturing more value from the steer portion or contact the Herefords Australia office.
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