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
Breeding Brahmans with Alf Collins of ALC Brahmans
Ever wondered what it takes to breed top-quality Brahmans? This week on the podcast we have Alf Collins, of ALC Brahmans, sharing how he and the team do just that with a disciplined approach to breeding and selection. Alf discusses the evolution of the ALC herd, the business today and the stringent criteria they apply when selecting their Brahmans.
ALC started with Alf's grandfather when he introduced Brahman genetics into his British herds back in the 1950s. This move was met with scepticism by many, who considered Brahman cattle more suitable for a zoo than a farm. However, the benefits quickly became apparent, leading to a legacy that Alf and his family continue to build upon.
Today, ALC operates over 70,000 acres in Queensland, with roughly 1,700 seed stock females and 1,200 commercial females.
Mark and Alf discuss the selection criteria employed at ALC and their use of EBVs to breed a Brahman that excels in reproduction, survivability and temperament, is well-muscled, and is highly efficient at grazing.
Alf explains how they have optimised fertility by not moving their mating date based on weather conditions. Instead, they stick to the 1st of October, regardless of conditions. “We don't change our production year because of the rain, because the reliability is not there. The wet season can start in October. It may start in March. And we don't know. So we've taken an approach that we'll select cattle that work regardless and only keep those that work,” explains Alf. “What we're selecting for is what we call a dry season mating most years. So, a cow in the herd that says, ‘I'll put my hand up and work whether you rain on me or not. And if you do rain on me, I'll go even harder’.”
It is not just fertility that ALC focuses on. The Collinses have been breeding for natural resistance to ticks and parasites for many years. He explains that they didn’t like the idea of using such severe chemicals, for the sake of both the cows and the humans.
It also made good business sense to breed for resistance. “It came back to trying to run a profitable cattle business and the fact that we didn't want to spend money on tickicides,” says Alf. “We just had to be disciplined in the fact that we weren't going to do it. They have to get worms and they have to get ticks. We have to let that happen and remove the ones that can't handle it. And we continue to do it today, and we'll go back and analyse that by sires. If there's linkage here, we'll get rid of the sires too.”
Mark and Alf also discuss temperament, muscling and efficiency, along with much, much more.
Alf has a clear passion for breeding Brahmans and his enthusiasm is infectious. The success of ALC shows that with a clear goal and strategy, a commitment to science and sustainable practices, and a rigorous approach to culling, huge progress can be made towards improving livestock to meet the criteria of the environment and production system.
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 Alf Collins to Head Shepard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, Ferb. Thanks for having me on your show.
Speaker 1:Excellent, alf, you've grown up breeding cattle with a big focus on performance. Maybe if you could just start by talking us through how the ALC herd has evolved and the business that is today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess it's the Brahman genetics that we're using today started many years ago, probably in the mid-'50s. My grandfather introduced Brahmin cattle into his British herds at the time of Hereford and Shorthorn in the Marlborough District and that was unheard of in those days. Most people thought they should end up in the zoo, these Brahmin cattle. So he was sort of forward thinking but he saw the benefits out of. You know when he got the F1 progeny and you know the lack of labour inputs he needed to put into them and the production he was receiving.
Speaker 2:So he continued along that line and my father then continued and my mother in their own business and you know they they started off at it out of a family partnership with not much, not much money and not many cattle and there was a need for efficient cattle business basically and the Brahman cattle were the most efficient breed that they could, they could find and use it to run a profitable business and they really got into the analysis side of the herd during that time. And then, winding forward, louise and I come out of that family partnership and it's where we are today and we've continued the same thing. We came out of our family partnership with a lot of debt to get out, as everyone does, and start up, and we needed to run an efficient cattle business, and so the performance recording and the adaptive genetics has certainly been the path that's taken us to where we are.
Speaker 1:Excellent. So, yeah, so you and Louise and at least two or three kids there running around now today, yeah, that's right, our kids are getting up now.
Speaker 2:Our oldest son's actually started back with us full-time now. But yeah, we've got three kids in the business and today we're spreading. Yeah, we got three kids in the business and, um, you know, today we're spreading out over three properties. That, where the property we live on, scundaroo it was my mother's father's property originally and we're fortunate enough to be able to buy that after his passing it's um, it's 15 000 acres and where we run the, it's the headquarters. And where we run the it's the headquarters and where we run the main ALC breeding herd.
Speaker 2:And we've got Tondara Station, which is about 400 kilometres north here but it's about 200 kilometres southwest of Townsville in north Queensland. It's 24,000 acres and we run seed stock cows up there too, along with some commercial cattle breeding enterprise, and it's also where we run and develop our sale bulls. So, unlike a lot of other seed stock operations, we sort of run our bulls in our hardest country because we find that the easiest place to select the best cattle and for what we're selecting for. And then we run another property called Brides Creek, 400 kilometers, 600 kilometers west of here, which is about 900 kilometers south of Tondara, at a place called Blackall and it's got a few breeders there as well. It's 32 and a half tares and acres and predominantly used to grow out young commercial cattle and grass-fattened steers. The rainfall on Gundaroo and Tondara, where our breeders mostly are, is around that 600, 650 mil average, and Brides Creek is about 400 to 450 mil metres of average rainfall, so it's a lower, what we call the dry tropics country.
Speaker 1:But healthier country out there. That's why you're fattening cattle out there, or?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's probably the drier, stronger country, but more marginal rainfall and less reliable rainfall. Yeah, it's probably the drier, stronger country, but more marginal rainfall and less reliable rainfall. So by having dry cattle out there, if we need to reduce stocking numbers, you know it's easier to reduce numbers of steers than it is to step out of the breeding herds, and so it just gives us that buffer to decrease if we need to, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, excellent. So yeah, I think I don't know what's that total up to 50,000 acres or something or so, fairly 70,000 over the three. My math's not too good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and yeah, I might have said it right, but yeah, it's 70,000 acres and around 6,000 head to all up over the three places.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right on, excellent. And 6,000 head do a lot over the three places. Yeah, righto, excellent. So what proportion of them is this sort of 1,500, 1,700 seed stock cows in that operation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's about the breed of breakups 1,700 seed stock females and about 1,200 commercial females. Yeah, righto, Excellent.
Speaker 1:Righto, Probably one of the toughest questions you'll get today from me is what is the last thing you changed your mind about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a good one. I didn't know where to go with that, but it depends how deep and how far back we need to go. But probably the most important or influential recent thing I changed my mind about was it was probably a mindset change. You know, as we grew our business in a younger when I was a bit younger we were, you know, we were focused on production and efficiency and growing the business and that was our total focus. And as we had a family and the children are now starting to come back, I guess the importance of enjoying what we do has become very important, particularly if we're going to do it for a long time over multi-generations. And funnily enough, that mindset change to go away from the you know, those other things are what grew us our business and so they weren't bad things to be focused on, but just changing the mindset to a more enjoyable environment, make sure everyone's enjoying it. Funnily enough, we're probably more profitable and more efficient and growing faster. So I guess that's probably the biggest change that's affected us over the years.
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, fantastic, and that's exactly why I asked the question, because it brings out those things that we may not talk about otherwise. But yeah, it's interesting how getting the head right can end up being a productive outcome anyway, and we all have to head down, bum up for a while in business. But yeah, we're going to put our head up and smell the roses and it can have lots of benefits.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess it never changes, does it? That's the given, yeah, and so we still focus on it. But we sometimes forget to focus on the real stuff, and that's enjoy it while we're going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, and there is something I don't know if everyone feels that I certainly do. There's something romantic might not be the right word, but northern queensland, like there's, yeah, sort of cattle cruising around out there in the native, native sort of country, is there's something pretty special about it. So there's, there'd be good days to enjoy I mean not not the long droughts, but but there's certainly amazing days to see fat cattle cruising around in long grass. There's some, some amazing days.
Speaker 2:Oh, definitely, yeah, it's not hard to endure it. Essentially, it's why we do it when we really dig down into it and, yeah, the main thing is to don't lose focus on that, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. So if we get into the breeding aspect, which is kind of what we talk a lot about here at Shepard, but not always, but yeah, one breeding aspect which is kind of what we talk a lot about here at shepherd, but not always, but uh, yeah, one of your policies I was reading on your website which I really liked was not only, not only in cattle get converted into dollars, which I think is a great way of putting it. So how's, so? That's basically, if they don't, they don't rear a calf, they're, they're gone. How's that? Stringent selection criteria change the cattle over the years, like what have you seen change, I suppose, over how much has that been successful?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess that came out of the generations before me. Like I said before about building and growing our businesses and families, but I guess what's changed in the herd is that the predictability and reliability of the herd. There's been so many cattle thrown out for not working. What's left and what's been shaken out of the herd? You know there's been so many cattle thrown out for not working what's left and what's been shaken out of the system we can back in.
Speaker 2:So as far as cost of production and performance that we're expecting and forecasting for economic stuff, you know the herd stand up and the biggest thing in our environment is probably not so much droughts or how much rain we get, but it's the variation in seasons we get. So we can go. You know that Tondara block can go from 300 mils of rain to 1,200 mils of rain and yet the average is 650. So I guess the biggest thing we deal with is how can we have a cattle herd that can work under green conditions and then turn around next year and work under very dry conditions and sometimes for a few years in a row. And so by that selection of just keeping what works, it's a simple selection, but it's just the breeding herd. Actually it surprises me, like last year was a dry year here and I predicted a lot lower conception rates than we got and our body condition in cows was down and the cows stood up and often that happens they stand up and they produce.
Speaker 1:Yeah, excellent. And one of the things I was reading was you're very stringent. On the 1st of October the bulls go in, so the management or the rules stay the same, and so the cows have to fit the rules, regardless of what season. And that's breeding in that reliability. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we don't change our production year because of the rain Because, like I said, the reliability is not there. So the wet season can start in October, it may start in March and we don't know. So we've taken an approach that we'll select cattle that work regardless and only keep those at work and funny over time. You know, when we started here we were in a five-month joining period and that was regardless of selection pressure. Then we've wound that back now to a two-and-a-half-month joining period, still starting in the 1st October, and our green date, or the date that we're most likely to receive two inches of rain, is the 15th of December. So basically, our bulls are coming out when their rain starts, and that goes against what a lot of people talk about in management.
Speaker 2:But in our genetics what we're selecting for is what we call a dry season, mating most years. So a cow herd that says I'll put my hand up and work whether you rain on me or not. If you do rain on me I'll go even harder, but I definitely won't fold up if it doesn't rain. So we've shortened that mating period and I guess a big change that's come out of that is we've knocked a full wet season off our production life of our animals. So we're getting to the same sale weights one wet season earlier than we were when we started, just by having those cattle work fast and early. And you know, in our country that equates to 12 months, because we basically have six months of dry and six months of wet, roughly if it all works out. So if you miss one wet season you've got to wait through the whole next dry one and then the next wet one to produce and, um, yeah, so it's it's significant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so anyone can do the maths that 12 months earlier turn off, is it's going to be handy? And yeah, that's that's. That's huge, isn't it? The um, the cattle you're breeding are the result of, I guess, six decades through the generation of consistent selection pressure, particularly on fertility, which is probably, if we're being fair, wasn't a strength of the Brahmin, and that's why I guess fertility and any cattle enterprise, if they're not bringing in a calf, they're not making you money. There's no way around that. In addition to seeing that improvement and that reliability improvement, is there anything else that you've noticed change in the cattle in your time or in the generations before you? I'm often intrigued by some of the unexpected things that sort of might change with our selection pressure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I guess you know the Brahman isn't it's had a hard knock for fertility in saying that the conditions and where the Brahmin operates, most other breeds die either through heat, exhaustion or parasite load or lack of nutrition. And so I guess the survival mechanism, the nature's survival mechanism of the Brahmin was don't die, don't reproduce in the fact that I'm not going to die. And so I guess so that's where I think that's where it came from. But I guess what we, the approach that we've taken and my father and grandfather have taken, is let's make a selection for the cattle who put their hand up and work regardless, and whatever the trigger is that turns it on and off, we're saying, just turn it on, leave it on and we'll take care of the rest, and so that's how it's evolved. And I guess, as far as the fertility in the Brahman breed goes, it was probably more to do with excuses made why they shouldn't have to have a calf rather than why they should have a calf, that there is some fertility issues in the breed. But certainly we've shown and now heard that if you select for it, in the conditions that they're given, they're as fertile as anything. We could run there, but we don't have to spend as much money on having them there in production costs.
Speaker 2:But I guess, to get back to your question, I went a bit off track there. But an interesting and I hadn't thought of that until I saw that question and I looked into it a bit. But an interesting thing that I did notice is we've never made a selection for intramuscular fat or measured fat and selected for it. We have selected for reproduction speed and doability under poor conditions for many years. But as we did measure cattle through research, you know contributing to research herds and that sort of thing, the herd has come up high in the breed for IMF and fats and I suppose that shouldn't be surprising, I guess in the fact that the research has shown there's a correlation between IMF and fertility. And you know fat is energy and essentially we're selecting for cattle that will store energy and draw on those reserves in a dry time. But yeah, so that was probably the one that stood out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really cool and you don't know me well, but you don't know how much that really lights me up as sort of things we've seen elsewhere. But I think it's always really interesting where you've had long-term selection, like you have, and what other things change that we. And that's a great example. That makes sense, but not all biology makes sense, so it's great to hear that. I mean one thing yeah, I think often I don't know, maybe it's just me, because I grew up in the South, not in the North, but we kind of expect. Well, in my head Brahman's always been in the North, but yeah, I sort of forget that it's only been sort of last whatever 70 years or so since, and the massive changes they made by being able to be so more adapted to the diseases and actually live there and thrive there rather than in the good season and stay alive in the bad ones is what they're great for.
Speaker 1:I read again on your website that you don't do any tick or worm treatment, and ticks are probably especially, or can be, a problem out there. Has that been hard to achieve that sort of low-cost strategy? I guess it goes hand in hand. They've got to turn up and deliver and so if that's for the tick burden or not, they still need to deliver. Has that made it harder to breed cattle, or has it sort of been innate in the Brahmin? So not too bad.
Speaker 2:No, it hasn't been hard in the sense that the Brahmin breed man. No, it hasn't been hard in the sense that the brahman breed is, is, is, uh, it's evolved to be a tropical breed. So it's, it's naturally is adapted to yeah, to parasites and, um, I guess most of the adapted breeds that I've seen and you know I've looked at them in south america and south africa where it starts to go wrong is where people get involved and people take adapted breeds and then try to make them look beautiful. So they then change the environment and take away the parasites and add food and all of a sudden we can breed adapted parasites and non-adapted cattle within that breed, if that makes sense. So I guess it wasn't hard to do. It just meant we had to be disciplined.
Speaker 2:And again it comes back to trying to run a profitable cattle business and the fact that we didn't want to spend money on ticker sides. We don't want to run around with poison on our back anyway. It never made sense to us to pour poison on a cow and then eat it anyway, and so we just had to be disciplined in the fact that we weren't going to do it. And a part of, as I'm sure you know, like a part of getting resistance to parasoids is they have to get a load on them anyway. They have to get worms and they have to get ticks to get a load on them anyway, they have to get worms and they have to get ticks, yeah. And so we have to let that happen and select the ones that can't handle it. And we see that through reproduction, we see that through loss of weight gain, and just remove those cattle. And yeah, so it was just a disciplined approach.
Speaker 2:And obviously we had some cattle that don't look very pretty, some cattle get chewed up by flies and that, and we just need to take those cattle out and keep doing it. We continue today to do it. Obviously, there's less and less. All our cattle get ticks on them because they live in the ticks but they don't get affected by, they don't get a big enough burden of ticks to decrease their production. And far as skin conditions with buffalo fly, after the preg test every year, that's the last thing we do. We go through the cows and anything with fly lesions on them. They get taken out of the herd, yeah, and we'll go back and analyse that by sire. If there's linkage here, we'll get rid of the sires too, but yeah, so it's just a disciplined approach and it's the simple old thing you get what you select for and yeah, that's just how it happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, excellent. I guess with your scale these days at least the selection pressure you're able to apply is a lot higher than if you had 100 head or whatever. Yeah, you put all these things in and you wouldn't end up with many cattle at the end of the day. But having lots means you can, and I guess the time of selection as well really helps on that. Having lots means you can, and I guess the time of selection as well really helps on that. Temperament of the cattle is something me, growing up in the sheep industry is something I'm always keen on breeding for temperament. But it's listed high on your breeding objective list as well. How's that changed over the years? Is that, what's that selection pressure look like and what's how the cattle responding?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know the temperament. It stemmed back from my parents. I guess you know our business has evolved out of family businesses so the cattle have always been worked by mum and dad and a bunch of kids, you know from when they're small kids. So quiet cattle, for safety and enjoyment of working them has always been important, and so bad temperament could never be tolerated. And I guess you know, like you said before, you can't just when you're building numbers, you can't just go and throw everything out. That's not desirable. And so in the early days my parents would just take any cattle that weren't up to standard temperament-wise and put them in one paddock. Then they'd make all the bulls that got used up to standard temperament-wise and put them in one paddock. Then they'd mate. All the bulls that got used had to be very quiet and temperament's a heritable trait. So over the years some of those progeny would go back into that bad temperament herd and the rest would come into the main herd. And in this country we always get a dry year or two and we need an excuse to reduce numbers. So eventually there comes a time where that whole paddock can go and that's just how it's been over the years and you know, the herd now is very quiet.
Speaker 2:We run a fair few cattle with not many people and the temperament, certainly what allows us to do that and we've run on gistment and lease country with some very poor facilities and having quiet cattle has allowed us to still operate in those facilities without any drama and it goes on to. You know, the cattle settle in paddocks, they don't stress on trucks. You know, if they go to feed yards they go in and relax and eat on trucks. You know if they go to feed yards, they they go in and relax and eat. And, um, I guess probably what we call temperaments there's a couple of things to look at is, um, we're not looking for a dopey, slow moving. You know some people call that quiet but we still need cattle that respond and move office. But we need cattle who can handle stress and so will pressure. So what we're looking for in temperament when we're selecting is if we put pressure on they can deal with it and get over it quickly, and that's the way we select for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a good point, and one of the maybe unintended consequences of selection in other breeds or other species is, yeah, where you get two nuts on it and you've got an animal that you can't actually physically move because they're just so and so that kind of doesn't work and it might work all right in the south, but it's not going to work too well in the north where you've got to move them long distances.
Speaker 2:No, often you'll see cattle that I call them doughy, you know, or they'll sulk, you know, and certainly we don't want that. We want them to be responsive, but handle it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, growth is obviously a focus, as it is in any livestock business, but it's always a bit of a challenge because often, like you say, in your objective you're chasing moderate frame size as well, and those two things don't always go hand in hand. What's your sort of strategy to achieve? I guess early growth when they can and but not go out to to massive cow frame yeah, it's the, it's the um it's.
Speaker 2:It's a big challenge, isn't it? We're selecting for growth and we've seen it in plenty other breeds and it's in the brava breed, but I guess you know it's um. It comes back to that efficiency we're looking at cow efficiency is what we're trying to. You know that's the factory that's going to consume the most. And yeah, so we've always stayed away from the extreme end of growth, deliberately, and the extreme end of frame. And so if we're selecting breeding stock bulls, we'll deliberately not use those real high end fellas as well, as we won't use the low end either, but deliberately stay away away from the real extreme high end. And if we get growth through, through frame and not muscling ability or or without early puberty, we'll stay away from that as well. So I guess that's what's helped us.
Speaker 2:And then it's not unusual in the south, in southern breeds, but in Brahman breeds it's quite unusual to do a yearling mating on heifers, and we've done that for some years now and that's a really good way to take out late maturing framey cattle. Yeah, essentially, they just continue growing and forget to reproduce, and so that starts there. And then, going on to the cow herd, every year our cows carve in reasonable condition and then lose condition. That's just the nature of the north, yeah, and so as long as we continue to have that pressure and I was saying we've got a dry season, mating while everything's lactating and losing condition, so high-maintenance cows find it very tough to survive in the system and that really drives that efficiency there as well. And of course we're looking at mature care weight EBVs as well while we're doing bull selection.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. We might go to muscling or fleshing. Now I see that ranks pretty highly as well. Obviously that's the bit we eat, so it's important to have that. But are there other benefits to? I mean, we've found early puberty sort of links in sheep. Are they there in Brahmins or with muscling and fleshing?
Speaker 2:Oh, definitely, yeah, yeah, it's right up there. Like I say, we're a beef breed to start with. It's right up there. Like I say, we're a beef breed to start with, so we need to have some carcass to sell. But I guess the ability of the animal to eat poor nutrition and gain flesh or condition, like you're seeing in your sheep, is highly correlated to what we see in reconceptions. And going back to your growth thing as well, you know we can get, as you know you can get, the same weight out of a smaller frame fleshy animal or I call them a cardboard cow, a really narrow, tall one, and come up with the same weight.
Speaker 1:You might steal that off your mate. That sounds good yeah.
Speaker 2:Anyway. So of course when you go to those those big framey fellas, you get longer bone growth and later maturity patterns and high maintenance and all the rest of it, and we don't want that. So it's just another. It's just another selection criteria we can use when we're selecting for those, those profit drivers.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, 100, and so, yeah, you've already mentioned mature cow, white ebvs. But yeah, ebvs, or estimated breeding values, are pretty powerful, or some of us believe so anyway, and I guess it's probably fair to say still pretty underutilized in northern cattle, fairly well-utilized in the south and getting a bit of penetration in the sheep industries. But I guess, yeah, how do you use those breeding values in conjunction with what your eyes are telling you to sort of make those heifer selections or bull selections?
Speaker 2:Yes, it's starting to In the north it's gaining traction as well. You know it's nowhere near as well used in the southern breeds and a lot of it's because there's nowhere near as many people measuring and putting data into the system. But you know, the progressive end of the commercial world has certainly taken it up and starting to look for it and use it in the selection criteria. So yeah, we use it when we're making breeding selection on bulls. Once we're happy with the phenotypic stuff, the structural soundness and temperament, the standard stuff people look at, then we go to the EBVs and I guess the EBVs give us a platform to bring everything back to the same level and remove their environment and then we can make selection just on the genetic merits of those animals and it allows us we use, particularly in the fertility traits very hard to see that.
Speaker 2:It's very hard to see female rebreeding production looking at a bull standing in the middle of the yard. So yeah, it gives us a genetic background on what's behind those cattle and the way they're programmed to perform and drive our herd in the direction we want to go to. So it's probably a simple way to put it. It's the final thing we go to once we're happy with everything else. Are we going to have a perfect-looking animal standing there if it's not genetically programmed to drive our herd the way we want to go in those traits that we're looking for? They're no use to us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I imagine days to calving gets a fair. That'll be high up the list of the breeding days you're looking at.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, days to calving and scrotal size. You know, scrotal size for the puberty and scrotal size we measure at 400 days. So it's you know, standard in Brahman is 600 days. We take it back to 400 to try and really drive that puberty stuff. And days to calving is they're the two main ones we look at. 70% of our profitability comes from fertility. So we get that right first and then we go back to our growth traits after that. But without reproduction we don't have a business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I really like that on your website. For every $10 margin, $7 of that's coming from fertility. I can't remember the other two. Growth was one of them and all weight and quality and growth probably, or anyway the other stuff. Once you get a live calf, the avatar gets some value for that, but actually getting that calf there is a big chunk of the money. I should get a live calf. The avatar gets some value for that, but actually getting that calf there is a big chunk of the money. Oh, definitely yeah.
Speaker 2:That's where you breed a production herd. It's the main, the inventory. We run in our herd are mostly breeding cows, so for every cow run we need to get production. And the only way to get production out of the cow herd is weaning calves, weaning live calves and reconceiving. Yeah, so that's the first thing. We must have that first.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Obviously you're working at the starting end getting them going quicker. Longevity, I mean I know the Brahman bulls are pretty good at hanging around and cows Is that something you sort of look at, or that's, yeah, I guess. Where's longevity sitting in what you're looking at?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. Yeah, I didn't realise how good the Brahman bull was for longevity until I had some experience with some other breeds. But yeah, we won't list those breeds no no.
Speaker 2:Anyway, yeah, so longevity in the cow herd is certainly important. You know that, and the way we measure longevity is the ability to wean calves every year. It's the only way we measure it and with the pressure we're putting on the cow herd, there's not many cows get to live long, no, in our system. But, um, but those that do, uh, certainly the genetics that we want to, we want to reproduce and continue forward bulls. We're very disappointed if you can't get, you know, if you can't work a bull till he's eight or ten years old, and that comes back to, yeah, soundness, I guess. But yeah, actually, like I said, I didn't realise how important or how good it is to have cattle that do that. Yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we did a little bit of work with some northern beef producers and, yeah, kind of using the stats you would use down south on how long bulls might last for you, you had to buy a whole lot more bulls than what you do when you're buying Brahmas that hang around for 10 years anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well, that's right. We get, typically in the north, sort of seven years of age is where you'd kick them out, just because, not because they break down, it's just because they get older and grumpier and start to fight and stay on their own and that sort of thing. But most of them don't break down due to structure. But yeah, it's certainly good for bull breeders, I guess, to turn them over every two and a half years. It's not so good if you're buying them.
Speaker 1:No, no, exactly, exactly. Maybe just quickly on your yeah, yeah, so that strategy of finishing balls up north, which is, as you said at the start, is probably the opposite, what most people do, but it's a great concept of so they get pushed up and so they go there, move their wind as bull calves and up up north are they? Or how does that system work for your sail bulls?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so some of the bulls are born up there. There's the seed stock cows up there, yeah, and the ones that are born down here at Gundaroo. They get sent up there straight after they're weaned, and it's what we call coastal forest country, indian cooch country, which runs out of protein and energy early in the season compared to the better country.
Speaker 2:So just you know our clientele and our commercial herds run on harder country. So we want to make our performance selection under conditions as hard as we got, and those high-maintenance cattle who can't handle it, they simply just fall out of the system and can't handle it. So yeah, it's just our sower bulls when we present them are presented off grass anyways. We don't have to have a big fat animal. Our clientele aren't looking for that and it means we don't have 900, 800-kilo bulls to sell. But the comment we get from all our clients in Northern Australia is they turn up and continue to do well and produce a lot of calves, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, 100%, and then probably final question on the breeding is so all obviously DNA parenting is the only way you can roll. Are they all parent verified? Is that how you work?
Speaker 2:it. Yeah, everything's DNA parent-perified. That came about years ago and you know, bull dominance is a big thing in calf getting ability and all our clients have large, most of them have larger herds and multiple sire matings and in some areas there's even a few feral cattle still running around. So the ability for bulls to go out there and fight and earn their position to get calves is an important thing in Northern Australia. And you know, I think even going further.
Speaker 2:We're talking about longevity of bulls. I think it might further. We're talking about, you know, longevity of bulls is I think it might even go further in the fact that some bulls are prepared to fight and some bulls can handle a fight. You know, some bulls just seem to break easier than others. Yeah, and so in our seed stock herd years ago we decided, with the feedback from our clients, just to go multiple mating on everything. We decided, with the feedback from our clients, to just to go multiple mating on everything. And then, because we're DNA testing where we can get the damn verification at the same time, yeah, and it's gone back to what we said at the start about enjoying it more too. You know we're running bigger herds of cows now with more bulls, so we're working mobs.
Speaker 1:Less yeah, yeah, and it all, it all feeds into that as well yeah, it'd be relatively stressful time having lots of single side mobs and and bulls fighting over fences and carrying on, I imagine, whereas it'd be easier in big mobs, big herds yeah, definitely it's um, yeah, it's, uh, it's.
Speaker 2:if you're trying to, if you run a single side herd herds accurately, you spend a lot of time fixing fences and chairs. Yeah, it's certainly helped into that, yeah.
Speaker 1:Excellent Alpha. That's been a really great insight into the business. What's the future there at ALC? Do you think there's a next innovation or technology that you'd like to see change, or you think things are ticking along pretty well?
Speaker 2:Oh, things are ticking along well. We're increasing, you know, with the help of the pole gene DNA test. You know we're certainly producing a lot more polled cattle. Now We've changed from, you know, we were about 15% polled up to 55%, 56% now and that'll continue. We'll keep squeezing reproduction If we can knock another couple of weeks off, that we will and keep driving that yearling mating as hard as we can and finding those most productive females.
Speaker 2:You know I've thought about delving more into carcass. In our breed we're very conscious about selecting, getting too many traits and doing none of them very well or honing in on what's really important and making them work very well. As far as technology, I'm not saying we won't delve more into that, but we may. And, like I said, the herd is pretty strong for intramuscular fattening, so it's something that may interest us, but it's strong. In the Brahman breed it certainly wouldn't be strong compared to some of the others. But I guess as far as a technology for the industry looking forward, I'd love to see more work done on carcass or tenderness identification, post-slaughter and grading of carcasses along that line and then using post-slaughter techniques to change eating quality of carcasses rather than spend so much time talking about different breeds and stuff that we can't actually practically use in a lot of the area we run in, and so I'd really like to see that go advanced.
Speaker 2:The technology has been around for 20-odd years, but it's obviously the cost of doing it is what's the process? To say, the cost of using it is prohibitive as far as tender stretching and stimulation and aging and those sort of things. But I really think that practically, if we can get back to running animals that are adapted to the environment in which they're running in is a far healthier and sustainable way looking forward than it is trying to bring unadapted species into areas where they're trying to die. So, yeah, I'd really like to see that grow legs and it'll stem on from there. We're going into a healthier world and we're looking at carbon sequestration and things like that. Other industries are looking at us, so that's going to come back to less diesel burnt and more grass and pastures grown and eaten, you know. So the cow will become king and we need adaptation and we'll play a huge part in that process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a really good point. I'm sure if you look around in the country you're running, you're not this. Yeah, the best way to get protein out of there is to put it through a cow and and get it, and yeah, it'd be really. It is interesting how we it's always that challenge between getting an animal that's perfectly adapted to the system and then and then sort of with the consumer pressure at the other end. But but, yeah, I think you're right, there is some great stuff that can happen post-slaughter that certainly I've seen great evidence of and yeah, I'm probably not close enough to know where that sits in terms of priorities. But yeah, it's a really good point.
Speaker 1:Alf, that's been a fantastic chat this morning. I really appreciate your time and, yeah, great to hear all the good things going up there in our ALC your time. And, uh, yeah, great to hear all the good things going up there in our alc we. It's a far cry from christchurch but it's, yes, it's great to hear that the, the brahman, breed in in such good health. The one final question to show my naivety but red versus gray, is there any difference or is it just preference?
Speaker 2:no, it's, it's uh hair color. Yeah, it's uh. Yeah, it's uh, it's hair colour and it's a preference In our business. I don't care what colour they are. Once you pull the hide off they're all the same. Yeah, they come from two different backgrounds. Basically, the Red Brahman come back. It was developed with the Gur and Cindy breeds years ago and the grey breed was Nellore and Guzerat breeds, so that's where it all started.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, yeah, and so people now have preference on it. And there is, you know, there is some, there's good cattle in both colours, but to me it's a bit, you know, it's something we don't look at. To me it's a bit, you know, it's something weird. To me it's like trying to pick the state origin team on what colour their hair is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a very good way of putting it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, excellent, yeah, no, it's always intrigued me that some people seem to have a preference when I can't. Yeah, I was wondering if there was any difference, but that's yeah, awesome.
Speaker 2:Some people seem to have a preference, but I can't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was wondering if there was any difference. But that's yeah, awesome. Thanks, alf. Yeah, awesome. Thanks very much for your time, mate. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thanks, vogue.
