Breeding for prime cuts

THE DOMINION POST, 29 Sep 2005
By: MORGAN Jon

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Radical changes in the way meat companies pay sheep farmers for their lambs are on the way and a stir of excitement is rippling through the sheep industry. Jon Morgan reports.

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MANAWATU sheep farmer and ram breeder Dave Stewart smiles shyly as he recalls a particularly embarrassing moment. "Yeah, well, I hate to admit it. I had to go to a farmer I had sold a ram to and ask him to sell it back to me."

The reason? The Romney ram had been identified in a Massey University trial to be spectacularly gifted in two highly desirable traits -- his lambs grew very quickly and they had big meaty back end muscles, the kind turned into high value supermarket cuts.

But Mr Stewart couldn't tell this just by looking at him. He thought the ram rather ordinary, so he sold it before he heard the trial's results. "The farmer had every right to insist I keep to the sale, but he took a broader view," he says. "He accepted that it was in the best interests of the sheep industry that he hand him back."

The ram, named Mushroom by impressed Massey researchers, went on to be the top maternal ram in the Alliance Central Progeny Test, one of New Zealand's most important sheep breeding trials. By using artificial insemination, it has passed on its valuable genes to thousands of lambs in the Trigg group of six Romney breeders.

These days Mr Stewart, a member of Trigg, knows better than to judge a ram by its looks. The Trigg breeders are in the sixth year of a programme stemming from the Massey trial. It traces each of their top rams' progeny to the killing chain and values their meat cut by cut. They have been surprised at the variation between rams they consider to be top-performers, a variation that can add as much as $8 to the value of a lamb.

Now other sheep farmers will soon be able to benefit from a similar system being taken up by at least two meat companies. Known as yield payments, farmers will be paid for their lambs on meat value, a big change from the current system of payment based on an average weight.

The move has stirred a great deal of excitement in the industry. Some see it as a big breakthrough that will revolutionise sheep breeding, some say it is just another step in an ongoing evolution and others feel it will unfairly penalise some farmers.

The companies involved so far are Alliance, the seven-plant South Island farmer cooperative that also owns a plant at Dannevirke, and Craig Hickson's Progressive, which has a plant at Hastings.

Alliance's system is based on the analysis of photographs taken of a carcass as it passes along the chain. Cameras are now operating in all its plants and yield payments are planned for the company's pools system at the end of the season.

Livestock manager Murray Behrent says the move is a natural progression from the company's progeny test. "It's to help the farmer increase his productivity by identifying carcasses that have better yielding cuts in the loin and the leg. This will be passed on to the market."

Progressive claims its system is more precise. It weighs the cuts at the end of boning and values them on their saleable yield. Mr Hickson says he expects to offer a payments system next year.

He says the weight-based meat schedule wrongly assumes every carcass is the same. "We believe the difference between carcasses is significant enough to warrant it being reported and paid on. Until you pay on it you don't influence the behaviour to change. Farmers are continually looking to improve the value of their product but at the moment they can't improve the yield because there is no information supplied to them."

Other companies are watching with interest. PPCS-Richmond, New Zealand's biggest with 15 plants, is trialling a system that aims to identify the relationship between weight, fat cover, shape, saleable meat yield, meat colour and acidity.

However, operating officer Keith Cooper is not entirely convinced it is needed. "The counter argument could be that as the lambs come through the system now they meet the marketplace demand for a lot of different weights and sizes. There's no point paying the farmer on some sort of yield basis if the processers and exporters are not getting extra money for that meat."

AFFCO, owner of seven North Island plants, is firmly against yield payments. Livestock manager Athol Murray says the technology to measure yield "so well it is beyond question" does not exist and he dislikes the idea anyway. "All you're doing is reallocating the cake, you won't be making the cake any bigger. Farmers have this idea they are all going to get more, but that's not the case -- some will get less."

This is dismissed by sheep genetics consultant George Cruickshank, who helped design Mr Hickson's system. He expects better payments for higher yielding carcasses to encourage below average farmers to improve. "We know there's variation but we have only small snapshots of it. This is going to give us access to the whole industry to let us know what's really happening out there."

He says meat yield information flowing back to the farmer from the meat plants will fire up the sheep industry. With objective information on meat size and value, the reputation of some breeds and their breeders will be on the line.

An informal league table of breeders could develop. "It's going to be interesting. People are going to look at their ram breeder and if he's under the halfway mark and not doing a lot about it they'll go to someone else. Money talks."

He expects breeders to change emphasis away from increasing fertility, which he feels has hit a ceiling, to improving growth rates and meat yield.

"The significance to the industry is huge. We won't reap the benefit fully now, it will be ongoing for more than a decade."

Massey University geneticist Hugh Blair, who has worked closely with the Trigg group, says meat yield is just one of many traits breeders should look for. "Most of the value of a lamb is in getting it to a target weight as soon as possible. So, we've already got a top product, after 30 years of breeding for growth, and this is the icing on the cake."

He expects a two-tier system of selling lambs to evolve. Farmers will send off the lambs with high meat value to a plant paying on yield and the lesser lines to plants that are not. "With this, the good drafters will come into their own. They are the ones who will get in and feel out the high yielding back end, the strip loin, the French rack."

For farmer groups that are already involved in carcass trials the move to yield payments is a dream come true. They feel their detailed knowledge of the capabilities of their rams will give them a big jump on other breeders.

In the lower North Island, 11 Poll Dorset breeders, under the name Mega Meat, have followed Trigg's lead and begun carcass testing. Their findings have been boosted by the identification of a gene exclusive to the Poll Dorset that produces 10 per cent meatier loin chops.

Discovery of this gene also resolves another problem for breeders aiming at market values. They can use it to increase the loin alone, giving the bigger loins the market wants but leaving other muscles the same size, which the market also prefers. However, if the market changes and big legs and hindquarters are wanted, another gene to produce this has been discovered in Texels.

Poll Dorset breeder Ross Pratt, of Apiti, is building on previous success in the Alliance progeny test by using the loin genetics in his flock. He says the income lift from this will be worth $2-$3 a 16kg lamb.

The Mega Meat members contribute to a 3500-ewe elite flock and Mr Pratt says the variation in the carcass value of the rams' progeny among rams the farmers thought were their best amounts to $4-$5 a head. He thinks it is time to now regard the Poll Dorset as more than just a terminal sire.

"The big improvements could come on the maternal side. The Poll Dorset is bred now for multiple lambs and wool and the carcass value is not really considered. But you add the meat value to the fertility trait and it's a different story."

Dave Stewart feels doubly blessed. He is a member of both Trigg and Mega Meat and as well as having a winner in the Romney ram Mushroom he also has Poll Dorset rams with the meaty loin gene.

Unsurprisingly, he is an enthusiastic supporter of yield payments. "The ability to accurately value a carcass is a big scientific breakthrough," he says. "It's all very well to churn out numbers but you have to produce what the end user wants."

Since being in the Trigg group he has seen his Romneys change, to being faster maturing with big back ends. "Going to the works and taking part in weighing the meat from your lambs, seeing for yourself the big differences between them and taking that information back to the farm to decide your breeding policy -- that is the most rewarding thing I have ever done in my farming life," he says.

"I won't use a ram unless I am confident its progeny are going to perform. Why use a ram whose lambs are going to be $8 worse off than others? He might be a super-dooper looking one, but that's no good if he can't perform. I've learnt that lesson."