Genetic progress to meet deer industry goals

Rural News

Balfour deer research operation 'strong'

16th Jun 11, 11:27am by Tony Chaston

Deer Improvements genetic research farm is a valuable asset for the deer industry, as it's size and speciality allows it to push the boundaries, in improving the industrys genetics.

The "heavier and earlier"goal for yearling animals is an industry focus and if by breeding and management, fawns can be calved earlier there is more potential to reach heavier weights.

With premiums now paid for animals in the 50-85kg carcass range, and the industry average for young animals only in the late 50's, there is a big opportunity for extra revenue. A 10kg lift in carcass weight colud be worth $80/hd and make a large improvement in venison gross margins for deer farmers, and allow them to compete with dairy support which has encroached into its traditional finishing land.

Running a fully stocked farm is one challenge; tackling genetics and moving to a yield-based return is another. Five years ago Deer Improvement opened its research farm at Balfour, which is now fully stocked reports The Southland Times. It has facilities for semen collection and processing and embryo transfer work. It operates under strict biosecurity protocols that involve a quarantine block, an isolation block, doubled-fenced boundaries, vehicle wash-down bay, contract pest control and continous disease testing.

Deer Improvement general manager Bruce McGregor says the farm is "strong" and it has been the work on embryo transfer that is driving genetic gain and as a result, the 394ha farm is now fully stocked. Farm manager Des Ford said: " We are now fully stocked with 1300 hinds in the isolation block. We also have a couple of hundred two-year-old stags and 1100 weaners. "We have some spectacular stags and their sons are coming through even better than them."

Tarryn Walsh, who started work on the farm in March, provided Mr Ford with a "much-needed" pair of hands.Miss Walsh grew up in Southland at Mount Linton Station and completed her degree in agri-cultural science with honours at Lincoln University. A focus of Deer Improvement is to help deer farmers achieve killable weights more quickly andefficiently by removing any genetic barriers.

"We have now moved into yield and do a lot of work with the CT scanner at Invermay, and ultra scanning eye muscle to select for higher yielding animals."All first and second-calvers are naturally mated with stags joined before March 21. They are then pregnancy scanned and fetal aged to get conception date. "We are hopeful that venison meat processors will be paying for yield sooner rather later," Mr Ford said.

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36 Comments

by Gertraud T. | 16th Jun 11, 12:28pm 1308184120

Why on earth should New Zealand risk to introduce GE food?

The big advantage (and hence higher foodprices) we could achieve by nurturing our "green, clean" image overseas by emphasizing that we are GE free and nuclear free.

Quality should come before quantity!

http://www.giantexperiment.co.nz/default.aspx

http://www.gefree.org.nz

http://www.gmwatch.org/

by cam | 16th Jun 11, 12:59pm 1308185940

There is no GE going on with the deer.

Its all about breeding not genetic modification.

by Gertraud T. | 16th Jun 11, 1:31pm 1308187892

Of course breeding selectively for better stock has been going on for ages, I am just wondering why there is as described in the article "biosecurity, double fences" etc. if it is normal breeding involved. I am just a bit suspicious because nowadays experiments in this area are getting quite creepy, as a report from Argentina recently described that human genes are bred into cows to get a "human like" milk to use instead of breastfeeding and China tried the same, all in order to get more money for the "exclusive" product.

by cam | 16th Jun 11, 11:05pm 1308222308

I would think it is pretty hard to breed human genes into animals.

What they have probably done is inserted the genes then bred more animals.

re the Deer, check out their website http://www.deerimprovement.co.nz/. and contact them as to why they use that fencing.

Let us know what you find out.

by cam | 17th Jun 11, 12:10am 1308226204

Actually if you want to get scared about GE do some research on Zinc Fingers

http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/33/18/5978.full

.... the modifications under this method are untraceable.....

So in theory someone with a different ethics bent could modify something in a country that allows it and import some semen/seeds or the like into NZ and start breeding away GE animals, plants or whatever and no one would know or be able to prove it was GE. It may already be happening for all we know....... might help explain politicians

by David B | 17th Jun 11, 12:38am 1308227901

There is no need to get scared. Zinc finger technology is no more capable of creating GE monsters than electricity was capable of creating Frankenstein. But don’t tell that to Mary Shelley.

The Zinc finger technology, while offering a very attractive tool for introducing new DNA sequences at specific genomic sites, is actually quite difficult to perform and has a high failure rate. It's just another DNA recombination tool at the end of the day, it’s only advantage over existing so-called GE technologies is that one can target a specific site for the insertion of a new DNA sequence, rather than relying upon a random insertion that could end up anywhere. However using this technology it potentially allows a defective gene that causes disease to be replaced by a healthy copy. But the technological, biological and cost hurdles which remain to do that in a way that would lead to cures are formidable.

As for it being untraceable, that is not correct. Any stretch of DNA can be still be sequenced and compared to what was known to exist before. Any changes from the pre-existing sequence would be instantly identifiable. E.g.,

Thecatjumpoverthefox.

Thecatjumpedoverthelazyfox.

by cam | 17th Jun 11, 10:18am 1308262680

Thanks for that I am still learning about this stuff.

So traceable only if you have the original to compare it against.?

If I discovered a gene or mutation that for instance could make cows produce more human like milk ( to use the above example). I then inserted some DNA or removed some (whichever was required) and "created" that cow. I then bred from that cow and tested its offspring to see if the change had been inheritated and it was. How could you tell that the offspring was GE? or for that matter if the parent was GE? .... ..could it be argued that it was simply a naturally occuring mutation.

by David B | 17th Jun 11, 4:24pm 1308284668

Yes, you would need the original sequence to be able to determine how it differs from what you are now looking at. But remember the original cow DNA sequence is wide spread as all cows have it. That’s why they’re cows. And they got their copy (an exact copy too) from their parents.

While there will be some variability in the DNA sequence among individual cows within the whole global population of cows, these differences run in families (or breeds) and remain reasonably constant, and it is not to difficult to build up a picture of the variability of a particular DNA sequence in a species, or breed, by sequencing the DNA of numerous individuals of that species or breed. i.e., what changes and how often is the change found? I need to point out though that these differences, particularly when they fall within the protein coding part of DNA are small. If the changes are too great, then it is likely that the protein that is produced will be so misshapen that it will not be functional. And if it is something vital, e.g., topoisomerase I, then the result can be fatal (embryonic lethal), and no offspring will survive. That is why there is still 86% sequence homology between the genes in a mouse, and the genes in a human, you just can’t have too big a change.

Many DNA sequence variations in genes are well known, and they become known as markers. I know of one in humans for example where in ethnic European populations about 25% of the population has this particular sequence whereas it is not found at this level in Asian or African populations. It seems that one of the early European founders may have acquired this change and they have subsequently passed it down to all their descendants, around 25% of all Europeans who are alive today. Thank god they don’t have to buy birthday presents.

In terms of creating humanised milk, what this actually means is taking out the cow gene for that milk protein and putting in the human sequence in its place, or placing in additional human genes. All of these genes are only expressed in the cow’s udder. This then puts human shaped milk proteins into the cow’s milk, or maybe alters the amount and type of fat in the milk to be more like what is found in human milk, although it is the cow that has produced them. Any human or other gene, or a synthetic made up gene that is placed in the cow would be instantly identifiable, as sequencing its DNA would show it up as a sequence that is non-cow, i.e., human, or synthetic. It wouldn’t matter which descendent of the originally modified cow you sequenced, they will always show up as having a non-cow sequence, as each baby cow inherits an exact copy of its parents DNA. If it was a very minor change however, such as the substitution of a single base pair, e.g., an A for a T, or a G for a C, it would be very difficult to say that that was not just a natural mutation. But such a small change is highly unlikely to be sufficient to reproduce a human milk protein, and may not even by itself create a difference in the actual protein that is produced due to the built in redundancy of the genetic code.

I hope that answers your questions.

So do you think humanised cows milk would be safe to eat? Let me ask you this question. I put before you two glasses of milk. One glass comes from a cow and has 250 mls of milk; the other glass was expressed by a nursing mother and has 50 mls of milk. You drink the glass of cow’s milk first, and you then wait exactly 5 minutes and you drink the human milk.

Will that a) kill you, or b) be unsafe to drink? After all, the milk in your gut is now a mixture of both, correct? In fact, you could describe it based on the ratios as humanised cow’s milk.

If you think it is unsafe to drink humanised cow’s milk, do you think it should be recommended to nursing mothers that it was unsafe to give their babies and infants any dairy products after they have given them a feed on the breast? After all that will mix up the human and cow genes as well!

by David B | 16th Jun 11, 3:33pm 1308195182

Gertraud T. wrote “Quality should come before quantity!”

June 2011Last updated at 10:21 GMT

Deaths from E. coli still rising in Germany

The death toll has risen to 35 in Germany's E. coli epidemic and health officials say about 100 patients have severe kidney damage.

The source of infection has been identified as bean sprouts from an organic farmin northern Germany.

At least 3,255 people have fallen ill, mostly in Germany, of whom at least 812 have a complication that can be fatal.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13746682

I’d be very very careful of what you wish for there, Gertraud. ‘Organic’ and ‘natural’ are marketing terms that appeal to the simple, they have nothing to do with quality or food safety.

In fact I think what has happened in Germany is a real wake up call for the chattering uneducated pitch fork toting classes for how dangerous organic food can be, and often is! But I won’t hold my breath that the lesson will be learned.

by Gummy Bear Hero | 16th Jun 11, 12:45pm 1308185135

The well intended , but vastly deluded folk , who oppose GE .... are guilty of condemning hundreds of millions of people in Africa & Asia to starvation .

.......... Why are the " greenies " such a cruel bunch ? ...

..... the despots of history , the Hitlers and Stalins , generally had their victims killed quickly . The modern despots , Greenpeace , and Friends of the Earth , prefer to starve women and children , slowly .

by Gertraud T. | 16th Jun 11, 1:06pm 1308186372

GBH

And the farmers in India and Africa which have been made happy by using GE modified maize and wheat are now happy, because they cannot collect the seeds from their harvest for the next year as they have done for millennia? They are now forced to buy seeds every year anew.

There have been many reported suicides of farmers in India because they have to take on debt to buy seed which they cannot repay.

You consider this more humane?

by Gummy Bear Hero | 16th Jun 11, 1:24pm 1308187498

You appear to be confusing GE with hybridisation . They are separate issues .

by steven | 16th Jun 11, 4:41pm 1308199270

This is the result of buying GE seed.....which is designed to self-destruct after one year....so farmers are trying to re-plant it and find nothing comes up.....or they get sued for using the GE seed that they have not paid for....

regards

by Gummy Bear Hero | 16th Jun 11, 4:46pm 1308199604

You are confusing GE with hybridisation . ....... They are still separate issues .

by powerdownkiwi | 16th Jun 11, 1:42pm 1308188520

GBH - that's spin and horseshit..

You might like to note that those who sound the warnings are not going to gain (although if our kids survive I guess you could call it a gain).

Whereas those who poo-poo them usually stand to gain fiscally?

I came at it from first principles, with no prior prejudice. You only end up at one point from there.

I never stop learning, and I study all sides of everything - but at the end of the day, logic always beats wishful thinking, and physics always beats finance.

We are a species in overshoot, boyo, the biggest biomass on the planet, and there's only one way it goes from there. Catton wrote 'Overshoot' in 1980, I would suggest that any who haven't read it, are invalid commentators. You can borrow mine.

by Gummy Bear Hero | 16th Jun 11, 1:55pm 1308189302

The poor and starving people of the wolrd would rather that they have a good meal , before you begin your arrogant Western pontificating , as to how they can farm .

by Vanderlei Luxemburgo | 16th Jun 11, 2:03pm 1308189819

come on GBH you know very well that most hunger is the result of bad distribution and warfare, rather then whether or not GE is permitted

by Gummy Bear Hero | 16th Jun 11, 2:12pm 1308190334

Absolutely correct , VL , but the article addresses the issue of GE , so I was merely sticking to the topic at hand .....( for a change ! ) .

by powerdownkiwi | 16th Jun 11, 4:33pm 1308198780

Actually, you just acknowledged that there are limits to growth.

Think about it.

The arrogant folk are the ones who suggest we can have endless population growth, on a finite planet with finite resources.

Staving off the day with one more rabbit out of the hat, is no mathematical panacea to the problem.

I limited my progenising to replacement-only, limit my resource consumption, and spread the word as much as I'm able.

You?

by Gummy Bear Hero | 16th Jun 11, 4:57pm 1308200225

Probably there are limits to population growth . And those limits will be found naturally , by the accumulation of individual choices worldwide ......

... Any bureaucratically ordained birth-control measures will end in tragedy & disaster , as they always have in the past .

The birth rate in Italy is 1.3 births / adult female . They're leading the way in de-peopling their land ...... and in quite a contrast to their own Pope's message of " breed-like-rabbits " , pump as many God-fearing good little Catholics into the world as you can . Every sperm is sacred !

..... obviously all those young lotharios in Italy are practising abstinence ..... because onanism is the unspeakable crime , and using " frangers " is several degrees worse than that . .......... aha de haaaaaaa !!!!

by powerdownkiwi | 16th Jun 11, 5:08pm 1308200880

Gbh - in Nature, every population overshoots, starves, and equalises.

That's how it is.

We, however, have artificially boosted ourselves, courtesy of the energy stored in fossil carbon.

So our overshoot is magnified.

You might be right re arrogant, though. I fully expect the global population to crash to 2-3 billion by 2050. I'm not volunteering to go. If that's arrogant, mea culpa.

by Gummy Bear Hero | 16th Jun 11, 5:15pm 1308201326

Are the peoples of Japan & of Italy starving ? ...... I went to Japan , and they eat very well . Top nosh , in fact . ...... Both countries are de-peopling .

...... are you confusing populations of wild animals , rabbit , locusts , and the like , with human beings ?

I expect the world's population to top out around 9 - 10 billion . And to stabilise around that figure .

by Vanderlei Luxemburgo | 16th Jun 11, 5:26pm 1308202003

Bonus points for use of "frangers" GBH

by Kunst | 16th Jun 11, 5:27pm 1308202072

My God Rogie- with statements like that, I hope the population stabilise with some top nosh Italians eating well radiated locusts from Japan to increase brain function.

..and please don't give me a "BS-thumb".

by Gummy Bear Hero | 16th Jun 11, 6:38pm 1308206339

.... and a big thumbsy up for my little friend Walter , the Kaikoura kid !

by cam | 16th Jun 11, 10:55pm 1308221725

Sorry to point out... but the article says nothing about GE. So as you were...off topic.. :)

by Gummy Bear Hero | 16th Jun 11, 11:30pm 1308223815

Ka-powie ! .... One Gummster shot down in flames . Yes cam , I was so busy debating Gertraud's blog that I didn't notice the absence of " GE " in the article .......... Bravo to you for being a lert ......

...... but you do realise that out of sheer embarassment , the Gummy one can never return here , to stalk the hallowed halls of Hickeynesian gloomsterisation , ever again ........

Ahhhhhhh , woe is me ! Alas , alak ........ I wonder wots on the telly , tonight ?

by David B | 16th Jun 11, 11:43pm 1308224580

It's the comedy hour with Stalin and Lenin, Gummy, with a speacial guest appearance by Uncle Ho.

And tonight's episode is:- On the Train to the Gulag.

Gotta hand it to those lefties, they sure know how to have a good laugh.

by cam | 16th Jun 11, 11:48pm 1308224911

ahhh never mind...... you can probably be excused for the lapse as the first post was off topic to start with!

....they have good fencing.....so must be up to something naughty .....it must be GE and creating superfreak Bambi....reality is they probably want to keep some dirty old TB infected possums from spreading disease on the occupants ....actually maybe thats why the Hells Angels have such good fencing......

whats on telly tonight?.... the same as last night.....a thin layer of dust (all be it a fraction thicker than last nights)

by Kunst | 16th Jun 11, 4:07pm 1308197223

12:45pm - is this a special "BS- thumb" function ?

by steven | 16th Jun 11, 4:47pm 1308199645

Are you that brain washed? GE actually does little to enhance output per acre....and instead of farmers re-using seed as they have done for generations they now have to re-buy every year, which they cannot afford. So the costs to the farmer per acre are actually a lot higher.....GE is a disaster for the world's poor....

It is the GE manufacturers who are condemning the poor to starvation not Greenpeace....The GE manufacurers charge monopolistic prices on their GE products and then sue ppl if their genetics even accidently get into other ppls crops....

The real worry is that genetic modification that causes the crop to auto-destruct, if that gets out into the wild that could devistate crop yeilds throughout the planet, we'd all starve to death in a few years.

No thanks.

regards

by Steptoe | 16th Jun 11, 1:21pm 1308187265

Selective breeding of Beef has given us the Angus, murry grey, jersey etc

When does the deer industry start to regist pedagree breeds?

Or has it already ?

And what is the potentual of these stud breeds then also being an export earner?

by Christov | 16th Jun 11, 2:56pm 1308192960

Well I always say two heads are better than one........so are four drumsticks....eight venison backsteaks......twenty four neckchops....etc...etc...

This is the way of the world untill a gigantic mutant corn eating bug gets a taste for us....n then we gonna git what's comin......whoooodaddy.!

by Gummy Bear Hero | 16th Jun 11, 4:02pm 1308196961

Hmmm , and some people reckon that a " 3 martini " lunch is bad for one's productivity & for the liver ........... but you've proven them wrong again , Count ! ..

.... That was beautifully argued ..... " gigantic mutant corn eating bugs " you say , ....

... yessssssss ........

by Christov | 16th Jun 11, 4:10pm 1308197408

Hic...yesssh your right aboot that GBH.........I think may mortine my wife in her shleep...hic.

by David B | 17th Jun 11, 4:20pm 1308284425

. duplicate post