Project aims to boost bloodstock efficiency

Research which could lead to a big re-evaluation of beef bloodstock has been launched in East Yorkshire, with a £1.2m grant from the government’s business development funds.

The Net Feed Efficiency (NFE) project is aimed at identifying bull lines which convert feed efficiently, to give maximum meat for the cost of what they consume.

This will be a significant development, according to project manager Richard Fuller.

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Currently, it is common throughout the livestock industry to measure how quickly the offspring of particular animals gain weight – and how much feed is converted into meat across a farming operation. But costing individual inputs against individual outcomes is a job so complicated it has not been systematically done in this country so far.

But the Americans have been showing there is a big difference in profitability between animals which simply eat a lot and those which grow efficiently. And the Technology Strategy Board, a pump-priming organisation funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, agreed to pay for the extra kit and manpower necessary to monitor the performance of batches of young Stabiliser bulls going through Wold Farm at Givendale, near Pocklington, using data collection systems supplied by Growsafe.

The Stabiliser breed was developed by a consortium of East Yorkshire farmers to produce ideal sucklers for the beef business. It was their shared business, the Beef Improvement Group (BIG), which put together the NFE project proposal and Wold Farm is the BIG’s bull farm. Richard Fuller used to run the farm and is now technical director for the group.

Traditional breed societies are beginning to take an interest in the NFE line of inquiry, he says, but it is an expensive one to set up and it requires a lot of co-operation to get animals compared in identical conditions, which effectively means on the same site.

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However, he is talking to a breeder of another breed who is interested in taking part in the Wold Farm programme.

Meanwhile, pig breeder and East Yorkshire farming company JSR, a shareholder in the BIG, is taking a strong interest.

Also involved in one way or another are supermarket chain Morrisons, feed-mixer maker Keenan, farm consultancy SAC and its parent organisation, the Scottish Agricultural College.

Woodhead Brothers abattoirs, owned by Morrisons, will feed back deadweight information on descendants of the bulls monitored at Wold Farm. And the SAC will process all the information to produce the first Estimated Breeding Values for Net Feed Efficiency for the bulls involved.

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Monitoring of a first batch of 80 young breeding bulls has begun and will finish at the end of March.

Results will be published as they are collated, so Stabiliser breeders can try out the most promising looking genetics as soon as possible.

But the whole project will cover around a thousand animals over four to five years.