Head Shepherd
Mark Ferguson from neXtgen Agri brings you the latest in livestock, genetics, innovation and technology. We focus on sheep and beef farming in Australia and New Zealand and the people doing great things in those industries.
Head Shepherd
Better Heifer Selection Decisions with Ella Holland of PBB
This week we have Ella Holland, National Territory Manager at PBB (Performance Beef Breeders), on the podcast to discuss how you can make better heifer selection decisions.
"PBB was established back in 1996 by Angus New Zealand and NZ Hereford. They saw a gap in the market and they wanted to create a company that would be a one-stop shop for the beef industry and provide them with all the services and products studs needed, and also create a unified voice for the beef industry," explains Ella. These days, PBB does much, much more and has sister companies that support the wider sheep and beef industry, such as Pivot Design.
One of the most recent services on offer from PBB is 'Igenity'. This extensive genetic data collection covers over 18 million animals worldwide. It serves as the foundation for PBB's genetic testing, which uses DNA to evaluate animals based on 17 heifer traits - providing fertility and maternal performance predictions, evaluating genetic merit in terms of feed efficiency, growth and carcass composition, and highlighting your herd's genetic strengths and weaknesses. All from a simple DNA test.
"It uses the power of DNA to rank your animals, top to bottom, on performance and profitability,” shares Ella, allowing you to pick out the animals with better genetic merit in that “middle grey area” of heifer selection. Whilst it’s easy to cull on structural faults and poor doers, keeping the fattest shiniest heifer, it’s not always easy to pick through that middle line of the herd and this is where Igenity comes in.
Ella underlines that there's no one-size-fits-all approach to cattle selection, explaining that the right choice depends on specific breeding goals. "There's not one good cow for everybody. There's a range of good cows and it's just working out what you want to achieve in your herd." PBB offers custom indexes, tailored to individual herd objectives, to do just that.
Mark and Ella also discuss the other great work that PBB do and the collaboration between neXtgen Agri and PBB.
If you would like to know more about PBB or Ingenity, you can contact us at info@nextgenagri.com or PBB at info@pbbnz.com.
Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited. We help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best: info@nextgenagri.com.
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Welcome to the Head Shepherd podcast. I'm your host, mark Ferguson, ceo at Next Gen Agri International, where we help livestock managers to get the best out of their stock. I want to take this opportunity to thank our friends at MSD Animal Health in Orflex for sponsoring Head Shepherd again this season, and I'm also excited to introduce our mates at Heinegger as brand new sponsors of the show. Msd in Orflex, or perhaps better known as Cooper's Animal Health in Australia, offer one of New Zealand, australia's, largest livestock product portfolios, with a comprehensive suite of animal health and management products connected through identification, traceability and monitoring solutions. Like us, they see how the wealth and breadth of information born out of this podcast can help their men and their farming clients achieve their mission of the science of healthier animals.
Mark Ferguson:Heinegger will need little introduction to our audience. A market leader and one-stop shop for wool harvesting and animal fibre removal, together with an expanding range of agricultural products and inputs, the Heinegger name is synonymous with quality, reliability and precision. The Heinegger team have a deep understanding of livestock agriculture, backed by Swiss engineering and a family business dedicated to manufacturing the best. It's fantastic to have both of these sponsors supporting us and bringing Head Shepherd to each week, and now it's time to get on with this week's episode. Welcome back to Head Shepherd. This week we're back into cows a bit of both really, but we're talking, but I'm on the cows. Welcome Ella Holland to Head Shepherd.
Ella :Thanks, mark, thanks for having me.
Mark Ferguson:Excellent. So you work there at PBB and we're pretty excited about the collaboration we've got with PBB and we'll cover that as we go through. But we might just go back to the beginning. You're relatively early in your career but it's been a little bit of time and doing some terrible jobs for us here at NextGen with the camera work. But yeah, I guess just your background growing up on the family farm and then Unity and then sort of up to the North Island, that quick journey.
Ella :Yeah, so I've always been passionate about the agricultural sector since I grew up on a farm in Chevet, north Canterbury. It was a sheep and beef farm which we converted to dairy, so I was lucky enough to grow up in both farming systems, which kind of gave me the bug that I want to do something in the agricultural sector. So after school I knew I wanted to do something, so I ended up going to Massey University and starting a Bachelor of Animal Science, which I absolutely loved, and then from there I've been lucky enough to work with some awesome companies, nextgen Agri Included. I've also worked for Agri HQ, which are owners of the farmers, weekly, and now I work for performance beef breeders, or PBB as it's commonly known.
Mark Ferguson:Excellent. Yeah, so sorry I had you pegged at Lincoln. Obviously I knew that. Yeah, obviously now you get that role of PBB is a significant role as one of the there's not many of you on the road, so you cover a favorite of geography and get round lots of all sorts of things. So, yeah, I guess if we just talk PBB briefly and we'll talk more about products, but the core role of PBB is to help cattle breeders, predominantly to do a range of things.
Ella :Yeah, so that's correct. So PBB was established back in like 1996 by Angus New Zealand and NZ Hereford. They saw a bit of a gap in the market and they wanted to create a company that would be a bit of a one-stop shop for the beef industry and provide them all the service and products they needed, studs, and also create a unified voice for the beef industry. So that's how PBB was born. From then we've grown heaps. We now look after 10 beef breeding societies and we cater, have products and services catering for both stud and commercial sheep and beef farmers. We have services from all animal registry. We own a silk bureau which you guys are in partnership with us about. We have a marketing company, pivot. We sell tags and then we've got the genomic side to the business, which we work with our partners near Gen2 to offer genetic testing for cattle and sheep, both stud and commercial.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah. So it's quite a range of products and a really good, I guess, success story from breed societies who wanted to do something different and now it's quite a good standalone business. Obviously it's still owned by societies but, yeah, offering some great services. We'll get to Igenity, which is probably the flagship commercial beef service. One thing that PBB are known for is their branch of Pivot, which is their marketing division, and some of the best, well, the best catalogs getting around, I think. So yeah, I guess probably give that a plug in terms of those Australian studs out there or New Zealand studs, sheep or cattle obviously a great service there to and been doing it for years and really professionally developing those catalogs, which I know is a bit of a pain point for lots of, lots of starts, getting a nice catalog with the right information in an efficient manner.
Ella :We also have Pivot, our marketing company, which specialise in sale catalogs. So they have a system called catalog builder which allows the Pivot team to extract data from, for example, breed plan. So it's a really easy system to make catalogs and they can make all different types and they help you through the process from designing to all the way to print, and they just make high quality catalogs for all species. And they also, as well as the catalogs, they do amazing at farm logos and any type of promotional stuff a farmer would need.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, cool. So definitely we'll put the links to that team in the show notes so people can find them. But if you Google Pivot or just Pivot, you'll find that service. And yeah, I think obviously it's going to say rare. It is pretty rare to find people that understand ag and are good at marketing. So it's great to have that service because there's lots of people who are good at marketing that don't understand ag and lots of people that understand ag and are particularly great at marketing. So that's good to have a service that covers both aspects.
Mark Ferguson:Well, we'll quickly talk about the Sell Bureau. So obviously, pbbo and Adam, we're proud to be operating that in conjunction with PBB at the moment. So for those out there who don't know, sell is the performance recording system in New Zealand and so the Bureau system is the gatekeepers of the data going in and out of that analysis. So, yes, the last few months or whatever, almost probably getting closer to a year now, we've been next to Niagara, been learning that system so they can operate that Bureau and really appreciate that collaboration with PBB.
Mark Ferguson:A quick interruption here to remind you of Head Shepherd Premium and our consulting services at Next to Niagara International. If you love this podcast and want to hear more of them, visit the hubnexttoannagrycom and sign up for Head Shepherd Premium and get an extra podcast each week. If you're listening to this and thinking you really do want to maximize the genetic gain of your livestock and feel more confident around the decisions you're making on farm, then send me an email at mark at nexttoannagrycom and we'll get in touch and see where that takes us. Let's talk iGenity. So commercial beef farmers out there are often culling some proportion of heifers and I guess lots of people with a straight maternal herd have a keeping cows in their herd for 10 plus years. So the number of heifers generated each year out numbers the number that need to be retained to keep the herd at steady state. So there's obviously some need to need to go. Igenity is designed to help people make that decision.
Ella :Yep. So iGenity beef is, like Thurk said, a genetic test aim for commercial beef breeders. So it was created by our partner's kneeogen. So the test is designed for straight and cross bred animals of the following seven breeds. So that's Angus, red Angus, heropids, cymetal Shortform Limousin and Gaffee. So the test is not something new. It has been around since 2003 in America and they had great success over there.
Ella :So we worked with Nege and over the last year or so to bring this test to New Zealand as we thought it would be a bit of a game changer for New Zealand farmers. So how it works is it uses the power of DNA to rank your animals kind of top to bottom on performance and profitability. So it does this by producing scores of one to 10 for 17 different traits, creating advanced profiles on your animals. So these profiles give you an idea of the animal's genetic merit and can help pinpoint any strengths and weaknesses of your herd. So it's a really awesome test as it allows commercial farmers to kind of have a good idea where they're heard as sitting, so that then they can make decisions and, you know, build their breeding objectives from there.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, so it's just for those who don't understand many of the words we're talking about. So the so it's basically take a chunk of year out. So there's a little TSU you collect a piece of DNA from the animal, which is all pretty simple and straightforward, and then obviously need to record who that came from, and then that goes away to you guys and or via Neogen and then back comes back as a series of what? Spreadsheet of data on each of those animals for those 17 traits.
Ella :Yeah, so once the results have been evaluated in the lab, they come back in a dashboard and compass. So you get the dashboard, has you know, all your results there. So there's one to 10 results as well as three predemade indexes that can use. So there's a maternal terminal production one. There's also a custom index builder. As we know, no farm is the same, so it allows you to make your own index. There's also easy tools that you can easily sort animals out. You know I want average daily gains score to be above five and it's so. It, you know, select everything that's above five, so it allows you to easily sort and manage your cows. There's also benchmarking tools so you can benchmark your all your animals against the whole database.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah. So what does a five mean? Five means is the average of the population in that feeds the test, or is it five like the average of the current drop? Or what does a five mean versus a one, versus a ten?
Ella :Yeah, so yeah, it compares to the whole database. For most traits, traits in identity are higher number is more favourable and the lower number, so you know a one compared to a five or average daily gains, means you know the five is going to have a higher average daily gain. Then, for example, one identity has the one share scores but it also has something called molecular breeding value which actually gives you like a KG potential difference between, for example, one and a five.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, yeah, so you get the actual as well. And so, yeah, I guess the 17 traits are pretty much similar to the breed brand, breed plan traits that you would see in your bull catalog, with some subtle differences. I guess the key one which I quite like in there, and it's a IGS trait stability, which is the chance of a half of being still in the herd at six year old. So that's probably one of the ones that people might not see or wouldn't have seen in their normal bull catalog before. But most of the others are sort of either directly almost the same or easily transcribed between the two.
Ella :Yeah, no, definitely. The other one that's a bit different is residual feed intake, which is an awesome, you know, an awesome trait to have, especially, as you know, efficiency is something that is huge right now and finding those efficient animals. So that's just a school that can help achieve that. Yeah, cool.
Mark Ferguson:So what's the turnaround time? So if someone gets some get samples collected, then how long until they find out that information?
Ella :Six to seven weeks. However, it can be earlier than that.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, yeah, and obviously they're off to the US, those samples, and then the data comes back or the samples are sent to Australia.
Ella :They come back by the dash board.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, cool, excellent. So what are we finding out there? You've done some lots of testing of different commercial herds. What are any sort of anything we know about that? We're learning about New Zealand. That might be a bit different, or there I guess, any.
Ella :Well, one thing to note is, you know, we talked about the stability trait. We are finding that most of our herds have sworn really, really high on that, on that trait, which is awesome to see. The other thing is, I think it's more like it comes back to like the individual period rather than we're seeing a big picture. It's when I talk to the customers and they finally see their results there's kind of a bit of a light bulb moment, but I actually, you know that makes sense. You know they're potentially having, you know, for example, they heard maybe actually scored quite, you know, scored low for a high, for birthway, and they're like, actually I can see that I used to have troubles with my birthway and so you know that's a trait that I'm wanting to to try, and you know, change and they can start seeing you know the different lines. They're like, oh yeah, actually, no, her, that cow line and she does, you know, seem to throw big cars in her schools. You know they're correlating, so it's quite a course to see.
Ella :When I'm talking to the commercial, they're like, okay, I can see my herds actually sitting there. They're actually getting it kind of. They're kind of getting proof of what they're seeing, or, and then they're seeing some and all that actually what they want. They're like okay, why would I keep her when I can keep her? She's exactly what I want. I think it's that awesome part we're seeing is that people are actually seeing that their herds potentially there is a range of animals you know half them will be what they want and there's a you know a half that you know why would you keep? They score low for everything and they can kind of see that yeah.
Mark Ferguson:And then I guess, marrying that information with with what you're looking at in the pen when you're in the arts, when you're making those calling decisions. Clearly there's whatever the number is, but we'll come up with some numbers, say 30% which are obviously look awesome, and even if they came with a bad data you're probably going to keep them in most cases, but maybe you wouldn't. But by the early born calves they're out of older sort of those nice five, six, seven, eight year old cows that have had a good run and so so they're maternal environment for those heifers has been awesome and so they look awesome. And then you're going to have some scrubbers down the other end, which I mean there might be some structural faults and stuff that need to go. But it's probably that middle ground where, like, you've got these amazing looking cattle and often they should have good genetics as well, and then you got the obvious cows.
Mark Ferguson:But it's that, yeah, I think it's probably that gray area where you get the most support from, from these sort of tools is where you're. I've got to get rid of this heifer or that effort, and so sometimes might have been born out of a heifer and therefore isn't quite as shiny or not quite as heavy as is the one standing next to it, but the test will tell you that, genetically or mate, are you that genetically this one's the better one to keep. So I think with everything we do in our genetic programs we need to as much as possible remove the environmental noise and and obviously people can do that if they know who's out of a heifer and keep those sort of records. People, or some people, don't know stuff. So it's a really good way to sort out the weight from the chaff, particularly in that middle ground.
Ella :Yeah, no, it's 100%. You know most commercial farmers do have limited information when they are making their heather selection decisions. You know they, if they're single-sign they may know the heather's sire and you know by the size EBBs have a bit of idea of a genuine merit. You know, they may know the dam and her performance, but you know, like you said, most of them are relying on the animals being typed to make their decisions. So, weight, temperament, confirmation, you know all these things are great, you know and, like you said, they can help easily identify. You know animals that need to be culled. You know anything that has bad feet or bad temperament she's going to go on the cull list.
Ella :But when you are comparing those middle performing animals, kind of you know the top performing animals, that's when it gets a little bit harder.
Ella :For example, when you have two heathers that look the same, are by the same sire, weigh the same, you know how do you tell which one is has a great genuine merit and is more profitable to retain in the herd?
Ella :Yes, most of the time it's a bit of a stab in the dark and that is when identity comes in and how to take some potential guesswork out of the equation, Because identity gives a greater insight into a heather's potential, fertility and performance without having to have a calf in the ground, which is, you know, which will hopefully give you a bit more confidence in your selection decisions. And by the time, most of the time, by the time you've chosen the wrong heather, and maybe two to three years down the track before you actually realise, and you spend all this time and effort, you know, raising her just to find out she a low production cow. So it just avoids that situation. Helps you, you know. Save your time and money. Yeah, by making sure when you are looking at this middle performing animals, you're actually choosing the right one for your herd.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, and it was one thing we know about playing with cattle is that, yeah, it takes a long time to breed cattle, compared to sheep, which you can turn over a lot more quickly and you can probably recover from your mistakes more quickly, whereas in cattle, yeah, it is a she's sort of carving, is two year old and then you don't work it with that cows any good for a while. Yeah, so it's a long, it's a long period. So every time you can improve that accuracy, that selection decision, then you'll improve your rate of genetic gain to your to your optimum, and I guess that's the important thing. It's not how you balance the traits out, and that's probably where, where our sort of role comes in. It's helping, maybe, within that dashboard, working out the custom index and that sort of stuff like how making sure that you're balancing the traits in a way that suits what you're trying to achieve with your cattle. That's probably the critical thing.
Mark Ferguson:There's no, there's no one size fits all, as we know, and the power of these tools is you don't, you don't only have to.
Mark Ferguson:There's not one good care for everybody.
Mark Ferguson:There's a range of good cows and it's just working out what you actually want to achieve in your herd and what's the priority for you.
Mark Ferguson:And I guess the other beauty about a product like our identity will be that you'll get a bit of a feel for the things that you're strong at and the things that you'll work at. And that's what we see in the flock profile we do in the marina game where straight up you just say, well, look, we thought we weren't. Well, we didn't know what our growth potential was, and they go all right on our farm but we really don't know if that's because we're amazing feeders or if the genetics are amazing. And I think I think every farmer in on the planet by none, should, through these tools or through progeny test or do something, find a way to separate genes from their management so they can understand which one is driving or what's driving what. Because I think that's you'll never understand or you'll never appreciate the power of genetics until you sort of see them and see different genetics under your management, I suppose, or understand what's genetic and what's just your management.
Ella :Yeah, no, I'm sure, and like I found, like a lot of farmers I've been talking to have been like I've been using weight as a big factor to to make my decisions and then they're like, but my mature count weight keeps increasing. And so you know that just helps potentially avoid that situation, because not only to the heaviest one at weaning is going to be the higher growth potential, it may just be, you know, the oldest or you know so it does help kind of eliminate those problems or, you know, mitigate them, and you know they actually are choosing the ones with the higher growth potential rather than just being an embedment of that speed better. Or you know, you know that you see, take the environmental management factors out of it.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, and that's a good point where you're trying to balance a couple of unfavorable correlations like early growth and mature cow weight. When you're doing that, it's basically impossible on a phenotypic measure because you just you've only got one measure and that's weighing weight or whatever, and then you're trying to work out is it, is it going to grow out to be a heavy cow or is it carrying to? Has it done all it's growing now? Yeah, and, and there's some aspects you can probably predict on shape and stuff. But reality is, yeah, this, this tool will tell you. That will help you understand that a bit. I guess. If people out there thinking this all sounds like, I suppose, because magic Emily, I guess where are the cattle that have driven this database and how many of them are there? I guess genomics is all only as good as the base population that it's run on. So that is important for the big database that drives it.
Ella :Yep. So identity is backed by a database containing both genetic data and performance data from over 18 million animals collected around the world. So that includes the IGS database, which is a database that the largest moded breed beef cattle valuation has run off. In order to bring the test to our genotype, we actually had to validate the system in New Zealand, so we had to make sure there was enough New Zealand and Australian data and a linkage between New Zealand, the New Zealand animals and the data to make sure it's going to be accurate for our animals and our system. So yeah, so that's kind of a bit about the database of that.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, cool. And so there's a heap of different breeds. Obviously, the seven breeds that you mentioned. They're all obviously contributing enough DNA to be confident to predict back into those populations, whereas there'll be other breeds that, yeah, other breeds that might want to use it but you just like can use it and get an inaccurate result. Or you just don't, or they just not let it use it.
Ella :So any other breed can use it. They're just not going to have an accurate result. So, for example, there are share arrays in the system but there's not enough share arrays in the system that to promote an accurate result for potentially like crossbreed animals we try and say under 20% or under 10% of another breed, for like a stable isotope thing. The one thing that's really cool about our genotype is that you can test both males and females on it, although we do see the test be predominantly used for the selection. There is the option to test male and female.
Mark Ferguson:Which is not there for some of the breeds of sodium base ones. Yeah, cool. So quite a bit of interest out there in people AIing heifers and people thinking about keeping retaining bulls out of those AIs maybe a range of risk factors around that and make sure you do it well. This product would allow you to differentiate those bull calves generated, if that's in your production system. Yeah, definitely.
Ella :But yeah, like I said, we mostly see this as a tool for heifer selection.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and we can definitely on that line as well. We have lots of Australian listeners. Is it available in Australia or is it only a New Zealand product?
Ella :It is available in Australia, so you would go through directly through New Zealand for that.
Mark Ferguson:Excellent, and in New Zealand people either get in touch with us or you and will organise getting samples to collect it in and send it away and all that sort of stuff.
Ella :Yeah, and one really cool thing about the identity test is that we can add on additional tests. So we can add on parentage, which is a really good combo, as it allows you to identify which size and you heard Edwin Wale and we can add on to such as Hornpoll, vvd as well and a few others.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, right, and that's all. All. That pricing is sort of much that people get in touch, so I'll work out what those bundle options are and stuff, depending on numbers and all the rest of it. Yeah, cool, excellent. You've been around the Yeeeling bullsails up north. What's the general trend been? What are people saying and feeling?
Ella :It was a pretty oh God. What did I say? The bullsails have gone very well. People were a bit nervous, just the state of it being the moment. They're a bit nervous to see what the prices and clearance rate would, but everyone has gone very well. The clearance rate was pretty good with the WCA where it's up north, and the prices were a little bit back, but they were still really happy about where they landed.
Mark Ferguson:Cool, yeah, so yeah, I think probably true, across Australia and New Zealand is a favorite of nervousness around ram sales and bullsailers this year, and rightly so. So, yeah, it's good to see the funny yearlings cleared and people still got confident to breed the next generation, which is and keep moving forward. Right, I'll let you get back to work and thanks very much. This has been a bit of an epic journey to get you recording on here. I'll let you down at least twice and then even today the system is trying to shut down. So we had a battle but we got there. So I really appreciate your time, really appreciate the collaboration with PVB. It's a great company for us to have a small involvement with and help with that sale bureau. So it's looking forward to many years in the future of strengthening that relationship and really going forward. And yeah, again, I guess just that final plug for catalogs Pivot are the best in the game. So if you're out there and looking for a catalog producer, definitely get in touch with that team.
Ella :No, awesome. Thank you for having me.
Mark Ferguson:Cheers. Thanks, Ella.
Ella :Thanks.
Mark Ferguson:Thanks again to our mates at Honega, who are proud world leaders in the manufacturing and supply professional sheep shearing and clipping equipment. We understand that their customers rely on the quality and performance of their products each and every day. Also, thanks to our friends at MSD Animal Health in Orflix, they offer an extensive livestock portfolio focused on animal health and management, all backed up by exceptional service. Both of these companies are wonderful supporters of the Australian and New Zealand livestock industries and we thank them for sponsoring the HIPAA podcast.
