Stock efficency is a new focus in fine tuning farm management. Why carry heavy capital stock when lighter more efficent stock, will produce the same return.Often in a breeding scenario the poorest producing stock unit is the breeding replacements.
The best example of that is the hogget over the last few years. Little income from wool, and often not much capital growth from when it changed from lamb to a hogget. To carry less more efficent stock improves the efficency of the flock and improves the profit from the farm.
This article in Voxy looks at beef cow efficency issues associated with choosing the best heifers. It was concluded that a better way of identifying replacements was on their two year old calving performance.
This research was part of a Master of Agricultural Science degree undertaken by Craig Thomas, a veterinarian and beef farmer, studying at Lincoln University. Funding for the project was providing by the Sustainable Farming Fund of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.
The work was based on data collected from more than 30 mainly Canterbury beef herds over a three-year period. The aim of the project was to find out whether there were any practical ways for beef farmers to identify and cull the least efficient heifers and cows in their herds.
"Currently, most commercial beef farmers choose the largest heifer calves for replacements and rarely cull any mature cows for poor performance," said Craig. "My research showed that there are practical ways to determine the efficiency of individual cows and that some cows are more efficient than others year after year."
Of all the different culling strategies looked at, the most profitable system was one that involved mating more than the normal number of yearling heifers and then choosing rising three-year-old replacements for the main cow herd based on their first calving performance."Culling the bottom half of first calving heifers based on the calf they produce will increase net future per cow revenue by up to $30 per cow per year," said Craig.
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