The Premium Quality Beef Herd is on the moo-ve!"

by Dr Norman Weatherup, Beef Technologist College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise, (CAFRE) Greenmount Campus

Introduction
The Premium Quality beef herd was established at CAFRE, Enniskillen Campus in 2003 with the objective of producing 100% “gold box” carcases suitable for the UK and European supermarket trade (“gold box”= E,U,R grades at fat class 3 and 4L).

Crosses between Simmental and Limousin maiden heifers and weanlings were selected as foundation stock. Heifers were AI’d with an easy calving Simmental bull (Cleenagh Flasher). In subsequent years Simmental bulls used included Dirnanean Jacob, Milnafua Graduate, Starline Klassik and Kilbride Farm Newry. Bull selection was firmly based on performance criteria. All were at least top 25% of the breed for eye muscle area or milk with several being top 1% for these traits. Where possible, sires with BOTH carcase and maternal traits were used to give the highest possible value to male and female offspring.

Tom and Matthew Moorhead

As the herd was established using young heifers and weanlings no replacement heifers have been required. Instead of slaughtering all the heifers, batches were sold to a project partnership farmer Philip Dick (Saintfield, Co Down). These heifers calved successfully at close to 2 years old with records indicating that they have excellent temperament and conformation. The remaining heifers from the project were marketed through Dunbia and carcase information shown in Table 1.

New direction for the herd
The Premium Quality Beef Herd is literally on the move to two farmers participating in a suite of technology projects managed by C.A.F.R.E., Greenmount Campus. The two participating farmers, Steven Maguire (Maguiresbridge, Co Fermanagh) and Tom Moorhead (Ballymena, Co Antrim), are interested in establishing a core of cows to generate specialist replacement heifers for the beef industry. Both farmers have participated in the Beef Quality Initiative which included a training programme focussed on correctly using EBVs. The initiative also provided financial assistance to encourage them to put the knowledge gained at the training programme into practice through the development of a suckler herd breeding plan. As part of Tom Moorhead’s suckler herd breeding plan Kilbride Farm Taylor was recently purchased – a bull with EBVs in the top 25% for growth, eye muscle area, milk and calving ease. The genetics in this bull will add value to both his future male and female calves.

C.A.F.R.E. Technology Transfer Projects
A key aim of several current C.A.F.R.E. projects is to provide farmers with the tools to meet the urgent need for suitable suckler replacements within the beef industry.

The results of a survey of over 5,000 calving records across the Northern Ireland suckler herd indicated that only about half the cows in a herd calve for a subsequent time within 390 days. This poor level of fertility can no longer be tolerated. Maternal heterosis (hybrid vigour) is a low cost, high return method to improve profitability for commercial farmers by increasing maternal and reproductive efficiencies.

Harnessing the benefits of hybrid vigour should be a priority for all commercial suckler beef producers. Current projects will demonstrate replacement heifer breeding strategies using sires with maternal EBVs. In addition they will also demonstrate the importance of mating heifers to bulls with easy calving EBVs. If a calf is born dead all other investment in stock and management is a waste! If a calf is born alive, but with great difficulty, then cows will be slower and harder to rebreed. If the first element in planning the production of good suckler replacements is breeding them, the second must be rearing them and the third managing them after they have calved.

Farmers participating in technology transfer projects with C.A.F.R.E. Steven Maguire (right) with N.I. Chairman Robert Forde.

Maintaining a single compact calving period means that homebred replacement heifers must calve at either two or three years of age. Economic efficiency is considerably improved by calving heifers at two but careful attention to management detail is required. Heifers should attain 65% of their mature weight at bulling at 15 months of age. This typically means bulling weights of 420-450kg achieved by a post-weaning live-weight gain of 0.8 kg/day. Post-calving management of these young heifers is also important so that they are gaining condition at bulling time to ensure that they continue to calve in the required period for at least a further 5-6 years.

Heifer sales
Many commercial farmers with surplus crossbred heifers containing Simmental genetics lack a vehicle to capitalise on the increased value of the superior maternal genes the Simmental brings to the package. A very successful sale for commercial Simmental heifers has been running in NI for a number of years and talks have been initiated between CAFRE, the NI Simmental club and participating commercial farmers about taking this sale to a new level.

Conclusions
The Premium Quality Beef Herd has provided valuable carcase data for Simmental X cattle demonstrating that this type of animal is suitable for the UK and European supermarket trade. The new technology transfer projects will explore breeding, rearing and marketing strategies to deliver high quality, replacement heifers based on the appliance of science in a commercial herd environment. All partnership farmers in this project will be agreeable to participation in future focussed open days / farm walks.