Why Stabiliser Cattle?
The animals you keep make a big difference to the financial and the environmental sustainability of your herd. We think Stabiliser Cattle have the right breeding goals and the Stabiliser multiplier breeders have the best tools available to them to achieve these goals.
Breeding Goals
As a beef farmer you and I want to produce an animal which our customers want to buy, and we want to do it in a way that makes us money. We want to produce a great product, in an acceptable enjoyable manner, and it must not cost more to produce than we can sell it for.
Our goals:
Good temperament,
Good feet,
Easy calving,
Forage efficient,
Good milk,
Moderate cow size,
Calving at two years old,
Feed efficiency,
Polled,
Good udder,
Good growth rates.
The best sales pitch is from someone with no vested interest, ask neighbours, your vet, or your abattoir how they find Stabiliser Cattle.
Breeding Tools.
Farming animals has always been about making decisions to select which animal to breed from.
The tools to do this have historically been your eye. The eye is a good measure to start an assessment. It is though one persons opinion against another. Using your eye you cannot separate the effect of management, versus the genes it possess, on how the animal looks and performs. There are also some things, such as birth weight or feed efficiency, which you cannot see by just looking at an animal in a field.
eye = good
We can do better. If we take our eye and add some measuring and record keeping, then from those records, using a computer database of many related animals, we calculate an estimated breeding value -a comparable score- then our ability to choose the best animals becomes better.
eye + estimated breeding value = better
All Stabiliser multiplier breeders are using the eye, plus calculations, plus genomics. Genomics gives an indication of which genes the animals posses. This genomic information means the estimated breeding value is much more accurate, it becomes a genomic breeding value. The genomic breeding value allow us to make the best breeding decisions.
eye + estimated breeding value + genomics= the best
The best breeding tools, produce the best decisions, which produce the best cattle, which means the best results financially and environmentally. Our Stabiliser cattle breeding program -which is meeting our breeding goals- is moving forwards, further and faster than others because we are using these tools.