It is not quite an international craze yet but farming's answer to Fantasy Football got off to a good start, with 30 players taking charge of 80 bull calves at Askham Bryan College last week.
The Fantasy Farming Beef League involves 10 teams of three Yorkshire farmers from Asda's supplier schemes, BeefLink and DairyLink, running eight calves each, from 12 weeks old to finishing at up to 16 months.
The college will run each pen, in its
National Beef Training Unit, according to instructions from the management team, who will make all the tactical decisions about whether or not to castrate, what to feed, when to sell and so on.
One option will be to sell for slaughter early, at about 12 months, to supply the UK market for near-veal which Asda is trying to build as part of its response to an industry pledge to find alternatives to live export of surplus bulls from dairy herds.
As well as being a good game, with a team trip to the Calgary Stampede as first prize for the most profitable outcome, it is a sizeable live experiment which all the participating organisations are hoping will produce valuable lessons. Anglo Beef Processors will value the carcases.
The costs are being subsidised by LandSkills, an agency of the Lantra skills council for environmental and land-based industries, run by Yorkshire Forward with funds from the Rural Development Programme for England.
Update meetings will be held monthly, at which guest speakers will advise on topics such as nutrition, health and supply chain. After attending the meetings, the teams can use the information gathered to alter any aspect of the cattle's management, including feed formulation, vet treatments and selection of market-ready animals.
Pearce Hughes, agricultural development manager for Asda, said: "The results of this competition will aid best practice in farms and I'm looking forward to seeing the results."
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