One of the greatest challenges in purchasing a bull is to weigh up his physical suitability for his role as a sire with his genetic potential to influence the herd. In my mind, these are two very important factors. However, you can’t approach them both in the same way.
It’s impossible to see genetics! Looking at a bull you really have no idea what his progeny are likely to be capable of achieving if they are given the right opportunities. All you can really see when you look at a bull is how well he has grown to that point in his life. It’s not really possible to know if his appearance is a result of being fed correctly every day. It’s hard to know what he may look like in your paddock or environment.
This makes genetic information so important. BREEDPLAN, the major system of reporting the genetic potential of a bull is how we have the opportunity to assess what a bull’s progeny are likely to achieve. The data recorded on his pedigree, his progeny or any linked relatives gives a better insight into how a bull is likely to influence a program into the future.
However, there is the fact that the bull has to be physically able to do his job of mating with the breeding herd for several seasons. Therefore, his structure is a key consideration. It’s also worth noting that structure is a highly heritable trait, which means it will be passed on to progeny. It’s probably the one part of an assessment you can be confident in the genetic influence when looking at a bull!
One of the challenges for many people is looking at bulls (or cows for that matter) consistently and objectively. Everyone tends to have their own view of ideal!
However, there is a standard for assessing livestock structure. The Beef Class Structural Assessment System has been around for many years. The system uses a score of 1 – 9 to assess traits such as foot structure, claw set, rear legs.
• A score of 5 is considered ideal
• A score of 4 or 6 shows slight variation from ideal, but this includes most animals, and any animal scoring 4 and 6 would be considered acceptable in any breeding program
• A score of 3 or 7 shows greater variation, but would be acceptable in most commercial breeding programs, however seedstock producers may be wary
• A score of 2 or 8 are low scoring animals and should be carefully evaluating before using in a breeding program
• A score of 1 or 9 are considered culls
While this does provide good objective assessments, there is often a request from producers for more information regarding the whole animals, including front end, head and eyes, testicles and muscling. And with that amount of information, it’s often been asked if it was possible just to get a single score for each animal.
Over the past 7 years I’ve been working with a man who has been grappling with these questions, particularly in assessing sheep and goats. Angus Burnett Smith has been working on ClassiMate for around 10 years and has taken it to a point where it is now offering some great opportunities for producers to objectively assess their livestock.
In the case of Beef cattle, Angus approach me to form a small team to suggest how cattle could be assessed on their physical traits in a way that offered producers a simple summary of the traits and an overall rating on each animal. Working with well-known industry leaders, Jeff House, Brian Cumming and Alison Hamilton, we initially suggested BCAS as a starting point, with the inclusion of the standard BREEDPLAN assessments for docility and incorporating muscle scores into the observation.
It certainly hasn’t been a small undertaking. However, in recent weeks I’ve been able to take this pilot concept into commercial reality to assess a group of sale bulls for a breeder in the NSW New England.
Angus has developed a simple app that can be used in the yards on a mobile phone to assess the physical traits of each animal. This not only scores the animal on a scale of 1 – 100 so that there is a quick visual reference for a producer. It also evaluates the data collected to provide a score out of 10.
ClassiMate offers a graph for each trait
· A score of 7 or above is considered an animal with optimal physical traits
· A score of 4 -6.99 is considered to have acceptable physical traits
· Scores below 4 are considered as culls for physical traits.
The opportunities with this form of objective assessment are pretty exciting. Producers can use the app to assess and rank their own animals to help make selection and culling decisions. Sometimes that can be a pretty difficult process as emotions weigh into decisions on who to cull and who to keep!
For seedstock producers, their own assessments can then be independently verified by an accredited Classimate assessor. This independent assessment allows animals to be identified as independently and objectively assessed. That information can be used to market and promote animals in sale catalogues or in other media or sales like Auctions Plus.
I’m pretty excited to see a project like this come together. I can’t wait to see the first sale catalogue in Australia with the ClassiMate assessment for cattle in the post! Hopefully as the main cattle assessor I will be getting out to help a lot of breeders wanting to offer this level of information to their clients in the coming months!