In its early days, the Manitoba Bull Test Station was a way for cattle producers to evaluate their genetics before genetic testing became de rigueur in the livestock industry.

Opened in 1963 near Douglas, just east of Brandon, the Sire Indexing Centre (as it was known then) had one simple goal — to test bull performance under a controlled set of management practices and allow producers to select (and sell) the top performers.

That hasn’t changed in the nearly 55 years since then — but the agriculture industry has.

“Back in our heyday in the ’80s and early ’90s, we fed roughly 600 purebred bulls. Now we have around 100 to 150 bulls on test every year,” said station manager Tyler Winters.

“The thought back then was that if you were a producer, you could see how you were doing compared to everybody else, and then provide good bulls for the commercial breeders to buy.

“That hasn’t changed a lot, but the numbers are going down.”

That’s largely a result of purebred breeders having sales at their own facilities, said Jeff Ross, vice-president of the station’s board of directors.

“It’s simply because of a change in the industry with independent producers having their own production sales,” said Ross, who produces Shorthorn cattle near Brandon. “That’s taken the numbers out.”

Bull testing

While single-breed sales have become more popular in recent years, the Douglas bull test station is the last remaining public multi-breed station in the province. Angus is the predominant breed there — over half of last year’s bulls were Angus, with the other half going to Limousin, Shorthorn, Herefords, and Charolais bulls.

Every bull is fed the same diet, regardless of the breed.

“We want to see what these animals can do,” said Winters. “The real test is on weight gain. We shoot for three pounds a day, and anything above that is just more genetics than anything.”

In a typical year at the station, purebred breeders bring their cattle to the station at the end of September or early October, when they’re put on a 28-day ‘warm-up.’ The warm-up period puts all of the cattle on the same diet in the same environment — allowing producers to test the true genetic potential of their animals.

At the start of November, bulls are weighed and then put on a typical backgrounding ration of 13 per cent protein pellets and free-choice hay for roughage — “something with not too much power to it to let them grow into their body a bit,” said Winters.

“We don’t push them too hard. We want their genetics to do what they’re supposed to do.”

The bulls are weighed multiple times throughout the testing season, which runs until February, at which point they’re evaluated for things such as average daily gain and weight per day of age.

“These are statistical numbers that a purchaser here at the station will perhaps use in his purchasing decisions when choosing one bull over another,” said Ross.

The animals are put up for sale in the spring. The whole process — including feeding, testing, advertising, and selling the animal — typically costs about $1,200 per bull (depending on feed prices).

Last year, the station also launched a ranch horse sale to diversify its business, to good results.

“It was standing room only,” said Ross. “Most everybody with a ranch horse probably has some cows. If they have some cows, they probably need a bull. We’re just trying to expand our opportunities to promote the bulls that are for sale here.”

Lakeland College testing

But the cattle sector has changed in the 50-plus years since the Manitoba station first opened, and that will make it tricky for it to regain the numbers it had in its glory days.

The traditional bull test done at the station is falling out of fashion, partly because birth weights have increased as a result of selecting bulls with the highest daily gain. Now, producers are targeting lower birth weights and higher feed efficiency.

That’s the type of testing that’s happening at Lakeland College today.

“The bull test here is not the same as the traditional bull test,” said Obi Durunna, livestock research scientist at Lakeland College. “We want to focus on testing bulls for feed efficiency, especially residual feed intake.”

The reason for that is threefold. First, feed is expensive, representing between 50 and 70 per cent of the variable costs of producing an animal, said Durunna.

“If we can identify which animals are more efficient at consuming feed without compromising on other traits, that’s more sustainable and a better route to productivity and profitability,” he said.

Feed efficiency is also “moderately heritable,” so it’s likely that any offspring of feed-efficient animals will likewise be more efficient.

“The next generation is also improved if you use such animals for breeding,” he said.

And finally, bigger isn’t necessarily better when it comes to bulls.

“When you use a feed-conversion ratio or a feed-to-gain ratio to select animals, the selection has tended toward keeping bigger animals,” said Durunna. “But bigger animals wouldn’t necessarily translate to animals that are more feed efficient.”

Lakeland is currently testing about 30 bulls from a local producer who wants to know the efficiency profile of his animals.

“The intent is to have feed efficiency included in the production goals and breeding objectives of the producers,” said Durunna. “Producers don’t need to test all their bulls. If they have weighed all other factors on the bulls and decide to test just the few that they’re interested in, this type of testing would serve them well in improving their herds.”

The post Bull test changes a sign of the times appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The province on Tuesday put out a call for proposals from farmers to take on a five-year contract handling a herd of five breeding cows for “research and development purposes.”

The request seeks proposals from “existing commercial farmers or new farmers who have had past experience in raising beef cattle (and) who would like to help advance the genetic diversity of the beef industry in Newfoundland and Labrador.”

The deadline for proposals is 4:30 p.m. on Aug. 23.

Rising beef prices have boosted interest in the beef cattle industry in the province, the government said in a release.

The province said it hopes to “expand the level of breeding available so that there is less need for producers to acquire superior-quality, purebred beef cattle from outside the province.”

Bringing in purebreds “will eventually allow producers to look within the local industry to acquire breeding stock and to produce quality beef without the additional high costs of transportation from outside the province.”

The province’s fisheries and land resources department, which oversees support for the ag sector, last year partnered with a Daniel’s Harbour dairy farm to raise five beef cattle.

“Initial assessments of the growth and health of this herd at Spruce Grove Dairy Farm have been positive to date,” the province said Tuesday.

Spruce Grove Dairy Farm’s Shawn Perry said Tuesday the project has “resulted in significant growth and development in our operation” and that “as opportunities to improve the genetics of provincial beef herds arise, this will be a game changer for the beef industry.”

Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Agriculture president Mervin Wiseman said the move “represents a significant building block in the establishment of a viable beef industry for the province.” — AGCanada.com Network

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South Africa is in the worst drought in 100 years, so bad that cattle farmers in other provinces have had to sell some of their stock. But in the diverse agricultural region of the Western Cape, farmers graze on marginal lands, and cattle breeds such as Afrikaners, Angus, Nguni, and Sussex are thriving. Sussex do well in South Africa, both as purebred stock and crossbred.

The cattle originated in England and can do well in Australia, South Africa, and Namibia, flourishing in both hot and cold climates.

But I’ve never seen a Sussex in Canada. Why not?

I studied the cattle with the owners of the farm, father and son Nollie and Pieter Stofberg, along with my tour guide for the day, Breyton Milford, the well-travelled operations manager of South Africa’s version of Northlands. None could say why there were no Sussex in Canada.

Back home, I did a quick Google search and discovered the only Sussex-cross cattle in Canada live at CL Ranches near Calgary, and so I called rancher Cherie Copithorne-Barnes to find out why.

It turns out that her cattle are a complete anomaly on the North American continent.

“We do have some Sussex in our herd that we were able to get from an Englishman who had a ranch down in Wyoming,” said Copithorne-Barnes.

That rancher has since passed away and his herd ceased to exist. Copithorne-Barnes doesn’t have any purebred Sussex on her farm anymore, but still has them in her genetic line.

“Frankly, the characteristics of Sussex — which are almost identical to Angus — worked really well,” she said. “But phenotypically, the cattle have been really tough to try and get through. I could have probably worked harder at producing a more purebred line of them.”

The Sussex-cross cattle at Copithorne-Barnes’ place have long toes. The breed is capable of foraging and walking long distances to find water.

“Really, they’ve got that instinctive survivor mentality and the ability to create a good carcass out of not a whole lot, which I like,” she said.

However, the cattle had problems with their udders and legs, and Copithorne-Barnes doesn’t use artificial insemination on her ranch. Instead, she prefers to take different traits and cross them to create an animal that thrives in her environment.

Her cattle still have some of the Sussex traits, and are a dark, red wine colour with a white muzzle and white tassel. She hasn’t had purebred bulls for two to three years, but Sussex traits are still coming through.

“We’ve never said that we’re going to be a breeder of any particular thing other than the animal itself as a whole,” she said. “Granted, the Sussex, if you were going to produce a grass-foraged animal, they would be it.”

Copithorne-Barnes also used Sussex to bring down her cow size.

“We were having 1,500- to 1,600-pound cows and it was just too much for their environment here,” she said. “They did bring it down, but the (animals) that were heavy on the Sussex, those cows were starting to mature around 900 to 1,000 pounds. They were way too small.

“It was just a matter of finding the balance. I never pursued it as hard as I should have. I never got the opportunity to travel to South Africa or to Australia or to any of the other places to find them.”

Sussex cattle in England have all been bred for the show ring, and that wasn’t what Copithorne-Barnes is looking for.

But while it appears no one else has raised Sussex in North America, that doesn’t mean people aren’t interested. Copithorne-Barnes gets tons of phone calls looking for genetics, even though she doesn’t have any purebred Sussex genes available.

“It just takes someone who has the ability to really hone in on wanting to bring in and go through the rigamarole of the purebred side of this,” she said.

She recommends that producers check out the website of England’s Sussex Cattle Society. For information about the South African cattle I saw, go to the Platdrif Sussex Stud website.

The post There’s a lot to love about Sussex cattle — but try finding any appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“I only had a few cows and it wasn’t worth having a bull around, so I just got Dad to artificially inseminate them with some beef semen he had,” said DenOudsten, who operates Peony Farms near Lacombe with wife, Emma and their three children.

“He used this breed called Piedmontese. It didn’t matter to me at the time. I figured I’d just check out what it was.

“But the more I checked into it, the more I realized this is the beef of the future.”

DenOudsten started out with 10 embryos from a breeder in Saskatchewan, and “that went very well.” He bought another 10 embryos, and he’s been growing ever since, expanding into purebred Piedmontese breeding stock. Now, the DenOudsten family has approximately 150 purebred Piedmontese cows and bred heifers and a total herd of over 400 cows — the largest Piedmontese herd in Canada and the only one in Alberta.

“We raise breeding stock,” said DenOudsten. “We’ve been flushing our own high-end genetics and multiplying them that way, as well as natural births. The majority of the bulls gets sold into the U.S., because they have a very well-developed Piedmontese meat program down there.”

The Canadian meat program, on the other hand, hasn’t grown much since the breed was first introduced to Canada in 1980, and despite DenOudsten’s early predictions that Piedmontese was ‘the beef of the future,’ there are only around 30 Piedmontese cattle producers in Canada, more than half of which are in Quebec.

“When Piedmontese came into North America, it was just at the time when the grading system was changing to emphasize marbling. As a lean breed, the Piedmontese have a little bit of marbling, but not excess marbling,” said DenOudsten.

“So they weren’t attracting the premiums from the commodity market. There basically was no market where you could get a consistent premium on a Piedmontese animal. There just wasn’t an incentive for people to switch to Piedmontese.

“Over the last few years, the beef industry as a whole has gone very well, and when things are going very well, people are even more reluctant to change. We’re starting to see the shift, but people are very afraid of change.”

Yield advantage

But making the switch is starting to make good financial sense for producers. Piedmontese cattle are a double-muscled breed, so the animals consistently yield higher — without any added input costs.

“On a hanging weight compared to live weight, they’re probably about five per cent more yield,” said DenOudsten. “But the real gain is on salable cuts. That’s where you’re gaining on a five to seven per cent range. There is a lot more salable meat on a Piedmontese animal compared to an Angus.”

Most producers shy away from double-muscled breeds because of calving problems associated with a larger birth weight, but Piedmontese cattle are born without double muscling, only developing it one to three months after birth.

“The Piedmontese don’t develop the double muscling until after they’re born, and they’re also a fine-boned animal, so the calves are long and slender when they’re born. When you use them as a terminal cross, it’s very easy calving.”

For that reason, the breed works best as a “terminal sire,” said DenOudsten.

“All you have to do is use a Piedmontese bull on a cow herd that works well in your environment and you get this marked increase in salable meat,” he said. “If they get crossed with a British breed, they marble very well, but if they get crossed with a leaner continental breed, they don’t express very much marbling.”

But even without the marbling, Piedmontese are “consistently tender,” thanks to an inactive myostatin gene that increases muscularity and tenderness while reducing the fat content in the beef.

“Piedmontese consistently have more meat, but they’re also consistently tender,” said DenOudsten.

“We’ve actually slaughtered a 10-year-old cow, and the butcher was just amazed — ‘What do you mean it’s 10 years old?’

Customers ‘for life’

“It’s very useful in marketing, because people have the same eating experience every time.”

The DenOudstens have partnered with Messinger Meats, a meat processor and butcher shop in Mirror, to market the beef, primarily in the Italian centres in Calgary and Edmonton and Sinnott’s Independent Grocer in Red Deer. So far, demand has kept pace with supply.

“Since we’ve partnered with Messinger Meats, it’s been able to market everything we could produce,” said DenOudsten, adding that the premium he receives for his beef is “well above” commodity market prices.

“At this point in time, we’re slaughtering five to six animals a week. That’s enough to supply those existing markets right now.”

But the DenOudstens are looking ahead to future growth as demand starts to outstrip supply.

“It’s a problem of trying to get enough supply. In the cattle business, if you decide you want more production, we’re talking a 2-1/2-year process before you actually have product available,” he said.

“We’re beginning now to try and partner with local farmers to use our Piedmontese bulls on their cows so we can buy their calves back, run them through our feedlot, and have more meat available to sell into these markets.

“We have expanded the cow herd and we’re growing as the market grows.”

That market growth is a result of several recent consumer trends, he said.

“Aside from wanting excellent quality every time, there’s a trend toward local food and a trend toward healthier eating, which the Piedmontese falls under,” said DenOudsten, adding that Piedmontese beef have fewer calories, higher protein, and more healthy omega-3 fatty acids than commercial beef.

His Piedmontese cattle are also raised ‘naturally,’ without antibiotics or additional hormones, and come with a strict traceability program that customers appreciate.

“It’s a combination of all these factors together that has contributed to the growth of this program.”

And while the jury is still out on whether Piedmontese will be the ‘beef of the future,’ the breed has a huge growth opportunity in Canada, said DenOudsten.

“People are looking to source healthy food, and if you can have an extremely high-quality eating experience at the same time, once you have a customer, you’ve got them for life.”

The post Is Piedmontese ‘the beef of the future?’ appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Dan Hays and his family are donating their herd of Hays Converter cattle to the University of Alberta for research purposes, with the herd moving to the Kinsella Research ranch by 2018. “This is a better decision than having a sale or distributing the herd in another way,” said Dan Hays. “This is a more permanent and lasting way of ensuring that research results will be important, and a good way to improve the genetics and make them more available and long lasting.”

Hays will also be making a major financial donation to enable the research centre to care for the herd of 100 breeding females and a herd sire group.

The cattle, developed by Hays’ father Harry, were recently part of a research study that used genomic information to control inbreeding and increase feed efficiency, carcass traits, and meat quality. The genomics research being done at the Kinsella ranch is a way to improve the genetics of the Hays Converter cattle and the beef industry in general, said Hays.

“I think it’s got a lot of promise and it will be a good home for what has been my herd for a long time,” said the 76-year-old retired senator.

His herd, which hasn’t been marketed since 2000, was used in a research project by master of science student Allison Fleming, who analyzed growth rates, ultrasounds, and carcass traits. She also examined the management of genetic diversity in the herd — inbreeding is a concern because the herd is so small. Thanks to her research, animals with very specific traits have been selected in the last two breeding seasons.

Hays Converter cattle were developed in the 1950s by Harry Hays, who served as federal agriculture minister from 1963 to 1965. He was a dairy farmer who was involved in the swine and poultry industries and liked the way those industries used measurements of the carcass of the animal or the volume of milk produced to select for breeding. When Harry Hays bought a ranch near Calgary, he began crossbreeding animals.

“He wanted to have a beef herd that would reflect ideas about crossbreeding in a better way than they were being reflected in the purebred selection processes that were the practice of the day,” said his son.

Like his contemporary Roy Berg, the elder Hays also crossed cattle, an idea considered highly controversial in the 1950s. His herd combined genetics from Hereford, Holstein, and Brown Swiss cattle, selected for fast growth, ability to survive harsh Canadian winters, sound feet, easy calving, and good milk production and fertility.

In 1975, the Hays Converter became the first Canadian pure breed to be recognized by the Canadian Livestock Pedigree Act. The breed is used in commercial beef production by three breeders in Manitoba and Quebec. There are several Hays Converter herds in the country, but most are small. The researchers at the Kinsella research station will genotype the progeny within the herd and create a genomically enhanced breeding program, hopefully developing new markets for the cattle. There has been some interest from the Australian market, with breeders hoping to cross the Hays Converters with Brahman cattle to improve crossbred production.

The post Famed Hays Converter cattle find a new home — and a new future appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.