 |
  |
       |
Home > Promotions > Excellence > Beef
With its temperate climate, ample rainfall and plenty of land suitable for pastoral farming, New Zealand cattle are raised on their natural diet of fresh pasture in wide open spaces without the need to provide a grain diet with nutrient supplements. The technical competency of New Zealand beef farmers is extremely high, and this is recognised internationally. They know what is needed to consistently produce top quality animals - the grass types, the farm management techniques, the genetics - and they use this knowledge to best advantage. New Zealand is a world leader in farming and does this without the assistance of government support. World and local market demand and prices determine income from meat exports, but New Zealand faces quota restrictions and other trade barriers in 95% of all its beef markets. In response, New Zealand farmers and meat producers have become the most efficient in the world, providing top quality products and excellent service. Our beef suppliers are committed to meeting the requirements of the marketplace. Through its animal welfare research capability, animal welfare codes of practice and on-farm quality assurance schemes, superior animal health status and mainly extensive farming systems, New Zealand can provide the quality sought by customers and consumers worldwide. Since European settlement began nearly 200 years ago, producing lean, healthy, meat has been the key focus of many thousands of farmers. New Zealand was one of the first countries to export meat and relies on maintaining its high reputation for its livelihood. At present there are approximately 4.4 million beef cattle in New Zealand. About 80% of the beef produced is exported and the industry has been developed to satisfy the requirements of overseas customers who demand the highest quality. New Zealand beef is exported to more than 80 markets, and it represents more than 8% of world trade in beef - excluding intra-European trade – making New Zealand the sixth largest exporter of beef in the world. The agricultural sector in New Zealand contains 16,000 sheep and beef farms, which earn a majority of their income from livestock farming activities. Most contain both livestock species in a number of classes, such as ewes, lambs, cows, calves, steers, bulls etc. The average mixed livestock farm has between 200 and 300 head of cattle, although many specialised beef units may have up to 1,000 head. The calving performance for the beef cow herd is around 90% of calves weaned to cows mated, and a cow will have at least four calvings in her lifetime, and sometimes 8 or 10. The beef cow base of New Zealand is the Bos Taurus British breeds, Angus and Hereford cattle, moderately framed and highly fertile, which can survive outdoors on hill country all year round. Those cows not required to produce herd replacements are often bred with a bull of another breed and the resulting crossbred progeny grow more quickly because of hybrid vigour. From the 1970s importations have been made through quarantine of European and North American cattle breeds, including some Bos Indicus, to provide terminal sires for crossbreeding and some limited supplementation of the Angus and Hereford maternal stock. Recent developments include "composite" cattle, consisting of stabilised crosses or three or four breeds in the one cow. Top ^ The sheep and beef farming sector contains just 1.5 million beef breed cows, which does not produce the number of replacement animals needed to maintain a national herd of 4.5 million (counted at the end of each farming year, in winter, at June 30) plus the annual adult cattle slaughter of 2.2 million. The extra beef animals come in from the large New Zealand dairy sector, which also has 4.5 million cows and heifers. They produce 3 million dairy and dairy-beef calves annually, and up to one million of the Friesian (Holstein) and crossbred male calves are hand-reared, weaned off milk and taken into the beef farming industry. They are sometimes castrated but now often left entire, while being raised from 100kg to about 500kgs for slaughter. The objective of the "dairy beef" or "bull beef" specialists is to maximise the growth of lean meat, at live-weight gains over 1kg per day until slaughter. Bulls grow 10-20% faster than steers and therefore reach slaughter weights earlier. By arrangement with dairy farmers, beef farmers also utilise some of the surplus cow breeding capacity in the dairy industry to produce crossbred heifers, usually Friesian- Hereford by AI, which can then be mated once to a beef breed terminal sire (Simmental, Charolais etc) and rear the resulting three-way crossbred calf for slaughter before the cow is culled at 30-32 months. This is called the "once-bred heifer" system and produces a high weight of beef per hectare using the dairy stock as a springboard. In recent years farmers have also employed "technosystems" to make the job of rearing and finishing dairy bulls easier and to put on lean meat more quickly. Paddocks are subdivided with electric fences down to half or one hectare "cells" and smaller mobs of bulls (less than 20) are rotated from one cell to another. They get top quality pasture each day and are not left on any land area long enough to dig holes and damage the soil structure. The breakthroughs in this type of farming involved providing access to drinking water in each cell, making the electric fences light and easily moved and minimising the disruption caused by fighting or "bulling", by keeping mobs small and redrafting where necessary into groups of similar weight. Top ^ A pasture-based diet is the natural one for cattle. The high rainfall, rich soils and equable climate allow cattle to live outdoors all year round in New Zealand, free from major animal diseases. A combination of the country's geographic isolation and strict quarantine laws have contributed to the high health record. Never has there been a case of foot-and-mouth disease or BSE in New Zealand. This can be attributed to constant monitoring of livestock health by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the strict adherence to a pasture-based diet This means that New Zealand beef products are lean, nutrient-rich and free of unwanted substances and harmful residues. There is no doubt that eating high quality, rich, green grass all year round maintains animals in optimum health, which is a perfect start to producing the world's finest beef. New Zealand beef is high in cancer-fighting conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), also called a fatty acid. The reason for this is pasture feeding for the lifetime of the animal. New Zealand scientists are now working on the chemical pathways in the rumen to prevent breakdown of some important intermediaries and so boost the CLA content of milk and beef from New Zealand cattle. Research shows that a meal of New Zealand beef supplies the body with a very good ratio of healthy omega 3 fatty acids to omega 6 fatty acids. The grass fed beef ratio, at 2:1, is much closer to the optimum than grain-fed beef at 12:1. New Zealand Beef and Lamb Marketing Bureau nutritionist Fiona Carruthers says the lower the ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 the better. "Omega 3s are particularly important for heart health, especially for those who have had heart attacks." Research has also shown the value of beef in terms of its mineral content. While the presence of iron in meat has long been acknowledged, beef also contains selenium and zinc. New Zealand livestock and people have a very low selenium intake by international standards, but fortunately the selenium content in red meat is something that can be and is increased on-farm. Red meat is currently under-appreciated as a major dietary source of zinc. Zinc deficiency can have implications in terms of cognitive development during prenatal, early post natal and adolescent years. Top ^ PASTURE FEED QUALITY FOR BEEF CATTLE Rapid live weight gain of healthy beef cattle will generally occur where the pastures they graze have good cover and height, where green leaf content is high and dead matter content low, and where clover content is high. A beef steer can be finished to 340kg carcase weight (pre slaughter weight of 620kg (1,366lbs)) in 18 to 20 months, in beef breeds with a large mature body size, provided with adequate supplies of quality pasture. This requires, for example, a calf birth weight of 35kg and an average live weight gain of one kilogram per day for 585 days. New Zealand prime beef producers now aim to finish a spring-born beast to at least 500kg-plus live weight at slaughter before the onset of its second winter, when grass supplies become tight again. This is often called "rising two-year-old", being around 20 months of age. They do this by providing at least 5kg of dry matter (DM) per day for each animal, which requires between 25 and 30 kgs of good pasture. Improved pasture varieties and even irrigation water have been combined with intensification through temporary fencing to ensure maximum grass growth. On lower quality pastures, such as those provided on hill country where traditionally many cows and calves are run, weight gains are more modest and heifers may wait until their second year (26 months) before being mated. Likewise finished cattle may be 30-32 months of age before slaughter. Top ^ MAKING GENETIC PROGRESS WITH CATTLE ON GRASS Beef cattle breeding research was carried out by the New Zealand Department of Agriculture at Ruakura, Hamilton and the Whatawhata Hill Country Research Station nearby during the 1950s and 60s. Until then, little was known of the inheritance of growth in cattle fed entirely under grassland conditions, nor about the impact of liveweight selection on carcase quality. Seven Angus bull breeders leased some of their fast and slow-growing bulls to the Ag Department, which then co-operated with the Department of Justice to single-sire mate each bull to 30 cows in the prison farms. Comparisons of progeny performance were made on 60 young bulls over six successive years. Further trials with closed herds during the 1970s eventually established heritability estimates of 0.22, 0.26 and 0.36 for weaning weight, post-weaning weight gain and yearling weight respectively. Subsequent trial work established the feasibility of mating beef heifers and/or using yearling bulls, on hill country and well as flat, and thereby speeding up the generation interval. American data suggested that heifers had to be at least 295kg (650lbs) before successful mating, but New Zealand researchers and trial managers showed that 230-240kg was fine with the moderate-framed New Zealand Angus. The industry tradition at the beginning of the 1970s was that selection should be applied no earlier than 20 months of age and mating begun around 27 months. The research work showed that weight gains in the progeny could be accelerated by use of faster generation turnover and a higher heritability at the yearling stage. Top ^ The demand for record-keeping increased quickly from the mid 1960s, as more bull breeders and scientists weighed their animals at different ages and sought to compare individuals and families. After a pilot scheme, the first Beefplan centralised and computerised performance recording scheme was begun in 1973. Run by the research division of the Ministry of Agriculture, with assistance from university-based geneticists, it served the industry for more than 15 years until alternatives from the United States and Australia were promoted. Now almost all of New Zealand's beef cattle performance recording, generating estimated breeding values (EBVs) from best linear unbiased prediction (BLUP) processing, is performed by Agricultural Business Research Institute (ABRI) at the University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, Australia, using its Breedplan programme. Collection of data and distribution of results, along with representation of different cattle breed societies, is done by Performance Beef Breeders, a bureau based in Feilding. Top ^ New Zealand pastoral farms typically run both livestock species, on an historical ratio of 60% sheep and 40% cattle, by stock units. Thus the average farm livestock population is between 2,500 and 3,000 ewes plus 500-700 ewe hoggets, and 200-250 breeding cows, plus replacement heifers, each of which count as 5 to 7 sheep stock unit equivalents, depending on size. Because sheep and cattle have different grazing patterns and feed preferences they are complementary and the typical New Zealand hill country farm is more productive with both species than stocking completely with either one. When feed supplies get tight, certain classes of stock, such as dry cows, wether lambs or aged ewes, can be sold so that the higher-value breeding stock is maintained. Top ^ |
home | products | become
a distributor | members | promotions | about us | contact
us
© Agritech 2003 |