The future of farming: How the scientific approach is building better breeding programs

also pick up some know- how along the way. I'm your host, Neroli Brennan. Today we're continuing our conversation with Jon Wright from Coota Park Blue- E. In our last episode, Jon shared his journey from cattle research to creating his own line of Blue- E cattle on his property Coota Park at Woodstock. Jon explained how refining genetics and collecting individual animal data has allowed him to develop the

most feed- efficient herd in the world. But in today's episode, Jon delves into the world of EBVs and how important this information is for refining our beef production system. He also shares with us how he's collaborating with researchers at Sydney Uni and ag tech developers to help improve our understanding of how technology can be used for adopting solutions that lower on- farm emissions, and allow us to

meet customer expectations. So join us as Local Land Services mixed farming officer, Claudia Hinrichsen, continues her chat with Jon at home on Coota Park.

the diet and also get to using the facility. And so you need that 21 days to ensure that you've got the largest percentage of animals that you've presented to the trial in the first place, starting off on day one, fully adapted to the feed and using the feeders. It's

remarkably easy. As we've gone along, I was very protective of that and did everything I possibly could to ensure that we got the maximum number on there in the new feeding systems and things that just it's really quite simple. So the diet that we use is not a high energy diet, so it's not a risky diet to bring cattle onto. It's a high protein, moderate energy diet, which is

suitable for growing young bulls. So yeah, the shy feeder thing isn't a problem in the sense of adjusting and then getting them on. The system has a natural thing in there; if a bull has reduced intakes for three or four days, he just falls out of the trial. He

can stay in the pen there and keep eating. Certainly we would take him out if he was not well, but if he just has three days where his intakes go down a bit, he's got a bit of a flu or a fever or something like that and then comes back on, system doesn't care. He's just eliminated from the trial and you don't get data on those bulls, which is a good check to have in the system and that's

the design. You don't get to say, " I'd like that bull to go in, please." They go, " No, these are the rules," which is good.

And so they were the two best marbling breeds at the time. They had advantages in being combined, obvious to put in a European breed at the beginning. At that particular stage, 27 years ago, the population of the Europeans in Australia was relatively small. Some of them had some big dramas as far as different things, temperament or structure, fertility, carving, things like that. So it just didn't seem logical to bring

those in. We were trying to be based on getting animals from large performance recording herds, that had a history of performance recording, again, not so great in those smaller breeds. So that's where we stuck, wherever it was. 18 years later, as far as I could see, that had changed dramatically. So the American Simmental Association had made a

big shift in the way... They were very bold and very responsible as an organization in the direction that they took the breed. As a society, they looked at themselves and said, " What are our weaknesses and what are our strengths?" Looked at those and said, " We've got to work really hard at fixing these things or we won't be relevant," or they were already becoming irrelevant, I guess. So

it was a really bold thing they did. At the same time, a lot of the breeders thought... saw the power of the black. And so in America as in Australia, it's about a black skin gets them into particular brands. So weirdly, but anyway, the Simmentals predominantly changed themselves from being a

red and white breed to a black breed. Whether it was their intention or not, 20 years later, now that they've changed themselves to black by incorporating Angus and creating a multi- trait, multi- breed type animal, the animal that they have now is far superior to the original product. Now it might be controversial to say, the product that has ended up from that crossing, is it more superior to both

Angus and Simmental, the original breeds? I'd be bold enough to say I think it definitely is. But it's not the point, it's just that they're pretty good multi- trait animals and useful to use in a breeding index to make more profitable commercial cattle. So we started to look at those and going, " I'm being a bit hypocritical, I'm

being like a breed society. No, I'm only Angus and Shorthorn cross, I'm only Blue- E. We won't bring anything else in." And so I had to sort of walk the walk a little bit and act in a way that we had talked in for a very long time. So it was about looking at those genetics, saying there's good ones

there. They'd attended to the problems that I was always fearful about with that breed, and there was lots of them out there, with really good performance recording information on them, to enable us to be making the right decisions.

So then we started bringing some of those in. More recently, not on a general way for the whole Blue- E program, but we have been asked by a corporate to breed a Blue- E cross animal with some Indicus content, so the bulls can go further north. So we're doing that for that client. We have no intentions of marketing those bulls at this particular stage outside that, unless

there's demand. But it's interesting. That's really another whole discussion to go into all of that side of things. How we identify those animals genetically and do an analysis is really interesting and presenting us with some challenges and we're up for a challenge. But the cattle look good, they

look really exciting. Again, it's just breeding an animal for a client at this particular stage, but there's a big number of cows up there in the north and there's a lot of genetics that is going up there at the moment, which is, I don't know, the science always said they were the wrong color to be going into those environments. I think they're working really hard on that and some of that science may have

evolved. But the thing that worries me a little bit is some quite big mature cow size genetics going into those climates. It's quite logical that you shouldn't. It surprises me that that's what's happening and that's a car crash waiting to happen and I hope people can be really,

really careful in doing that. And it's about seed stock producers being responsible for the genetics that they're breeding, not being just pleased that a bull's gone and they've sold it and they've told a great story, thinking really seriously about their own children's future in the seed stock industry that they're in and whether they're going to have a

future in breeding that type of cattle. Because once the word gets round, if fertility is starting to be worked against, up in that environment they've got enough problems, they don't need more problems. So if cows don't survive in that environment, they're going to find out.

the people behind them that breed them. So yeah, there's good and bad breeders out there, and always we still work on temperament in our cattle very strongly and you'll always get a little bit of it, and as long as you knock it on the head and don't accept it into the pool, then you're hopefully heading in the right direction. So no, like seriously, there was no dramas

in that sense. I had probably more dramas coming from the existing two breeds than I do from Simmentalers as traits coming in, which I was sort of trying to

fight against or have to be aware of. Not to perpetuate those traits as they come through in any major way is their mature cow size, their feed efficiency, their fertility, those sort of things, longevity, those really important traits that are hard, were hard to shift, hard to measure, but really, really important. I'm more concerned about those ones than I am about any of those other ones.

what breed you were, you could come on. They would take the information and history of those and all, certainly the whole pedigree and the pedigree performance information on the animals and use that. So we insisted that they take the lot of ours as long as we'd been going.

And the only reason that we went predominantly with Leachman was because they incorporated feed efficiency into their analysis, whereas the American Simmental system's IGS weren't and still aren't doing feed efficiency. So as much as I loved the people involved with that and the whole process, I couldn't not be including feed efficiency in our analysis after putting so much work into it. So that's where we ended up

with Leachman. Leachman is a family business in America that's been going for a very, very long time, they're fourth- biggest bull seller in America now. They sell three and a half, 4, 000 bulls a year, composites, pure Angus, pure Red Angus, pure Charolais. The family business doesn't own a lot of land, they have cooperators that they work with and those cooperators are collecting all the data and putting it.

And he decided to start up a performance recording system in conjunction with universities that did the independent analysis for him and that's where we went. To me, it's just a performance recording system. They all work relatively well. It's just an analysis, so you can argue which one's right or wrong and that sort of stuff. I just don't care

about that. I just want my data analyzed properly. You'll have some individual emphases on different traits in indexes and all that sort of stuff. Anyway, we went with Leachman and he seems to be growing. The data that's coming out of it is identifying our animals well. It takes you a little bit of time to get the confidence in it. We've really got great confidence in the data that's coming

out of it, and incorporating DNA analysis. Now, the whole 50K stuff, all our animals are going into, into the analysis and the data from the DNA is accepted into the analysis that produces the EPDs that we can now look at. So that's really exciting and we've just done our whole cow herd. So taken DNA from every single cow and haven't got the data back from that yet,

but it's going to be very interesting. And what's interesting is, I think it's going to identify our cattle better so we can make better decisions to breed better cattle.

genetics now, so that's pretty amazing. And he's talking that they're already starting to develop a EPD for methane and recording that sort of stuff. There's a whole world in that and another whole discussion about how that all should

roll, but he's onto it. He may not get a lot of support from his new president in that area, to be trying to help the beef industry reduce its emissions, but certainly something that I'm pretty passionate about.

When we started that range was there, you were going from 5 to 1 to 10 to 1, was the average. We've obviously closed that average in. We still go back to that trait of gross feed efficiency, it's the thing we're trying to shift. What we understood and what the researchers understood from previous work in other species, that if you just go on that gross feed efficiency figure, your

animals will just get bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's what happened in the poultry industry, happened in the pork industry, where you had these animals were so big that their hearts couldn't even pump the blood around their bodies or their immune systems just couldn't cope with the

mass and the volume. So the wisdom of all of those other industries and the researchers at the time, that we need to take growth out of the equation or out of that genetic link and make it independent. And so not taking growth out of the story, but just if you select for feed efficiency, you're not necessarily selecting for growth. Go to your growth EPDs or EBVs and select where you want to, but it won't be directly

linked. So residual feed intake was just a simple method that was developed to say, let's just look at each individual animal and say how efficient are they for an animal of that particular size growing at that particular rate?

So it just takes those out, it adjusts for those. And so if it's a smaller animal, not growing as fast but not eating as much, it can still rank just as well as a fast- growing animal that's not eating much relative to its size and its growth rate. So you can have those two animals ranking first and second in your test. You then just go to your growth traits and say, " Oh, that animal is not what I'd like

to breed from. Whereas this animal may be more to it." I've thought about it a lot, talked a lot over a long period of time, and it's just the responsible way to shift feed efficiency in a genetic population over the time, is the best way for doing.

matter. I read that and went, " Holy mackerel, what are you talking about there?" And then sort of just trying to look more through into that space and go, " Why is that?" And it's that part about methane, which is no one's fault, no one's did anything wrong, but the science says that methane is methane, and how that as a compound acts and where it goes, and it's ability to sit

up there and form a blanket and refract really strongly heat back into our atmosphere is just what happens. We can't change that science, that's just there. So going through and thinking about all of that stuff and ensuring that, one, the information was right, and that's all you can do is just keep reading and reading and looking and

searching. And again, what I said before, make sure you're searching for the stuff that disproves your theory as well as proves your theory. And if you're not thinking in both ways, you're not really being responsible in it. So it was a long time about reading and thinking and finding the right time to actually start talking about it, because it certainly was not something that was talked about

in the industry. In fact, it was quite controversial to talk about it. And so as somebody who was selling a product, that I wanted to communicate with people about how good our product was, if I started talking with that language, potentially people were going to call me an idiot or whatever it was, which all of it was probably true, but we decided to just find the time

and do it slowly and quietly and professional. We just started to do it and I had lots of conversations in pubs at night and dinner parties and birthday parties and whatever, annoying the hell out of people. 'Cause I wanted to find out what people thought and what their reactions

would be and what their part was. Anyway, so the next step for us was to say, " Well, we better see if we can collect some data in this area and see if we can collaborate with some people to

help us try and work it out." And once you sort of got to the stage that you accepted the science and then started to accept the potential risk to the beef industry into the future, then it felt like a bit of an obligation to get on with trying to find out what this science is about and how we can identify it and improve it over time and

then communicate it over time. Which was in all my understanding, it's all about the only way if we're going to stay here as an industry is if we can communicate to consumers that we're just taking a bit of responsibility for the small bit that we emit. That's all they expect from us. They don't want us to fix

climate change totally. All they want us to do is take responsibility for the small bit and that's what they're asking of everybody. So we can sit and whinge and feel sorry for ourselves all we like, but that's the basic principle of how it'll work. Because we just can't communicate with every single consumer and have a little chat, or expect them to sit down and watch a video

or an ad or something. It just doesn't work that way. They're not interested in us and nor should they be because it's just meat, it's just a bit of food. We're not that important. So our collaboration with the university sort of came around that space of just, again, trying to ensure that we're sticking to the science and trying to find out information how we can move forward.

So luckily we bumped into Luciano, who's at Sydney University and worked out some stuff. And so for three or four years there we had technology, that I couldn't afford but the university had, being able to collect methane production from animals in real time whilst also collecting their feed efficiency data. So we did that for a long time,

even as long as we had animals. We tested heifers that had then calved down twice and then we tested them again on grass out in the paddock with these same machines, saying, " Is this feed efficiency stuff that we're collecting in pens, is that giving us something that's worthwhile on grass in a cow?" 'Cause the majority of emissions come from our cows, so unless we concentrate on fixing that

problem, then we're only tinkering around the sides unfortunately. So that data's been collected not that long ago, still to be analyzed. It's a little bit frustrating, that we'd like to get some results from that. But yeah, some really interesting stuff. All the early signs of stuff is saying that it's there. The other part that we've just done recently

was with Agscent. Agscent's a company that's sort of developing useful agricultural technology for the beef industry, particularly in measuring pregnancy. Taking a breath of the animal into a bag, attaching that bag to a machine that measures. And they can tell within the first 18 days, I think, whether an

animal's pregnant or not. There's enormous excitement in the industry about what that same machine may be able to do in relation to detecting disease in animals, particularly respiratory diseases in feedlots and that sort of stuff. But Agscent, as a company, then teamed up with Optiweigh. So Optiweigh we know is a machine that we can now put out

in our paddocks. In a commercial sense, it's available at a commercial price, that will weigh the animals in the paddock day to day over a period of time and give us an idea of how they're growing. All that information feeds back to your phone and so then you can start making some decisions, if they're not growing as fast as you'd like, by giving them additives or making

moves and that sort of stuff. So those two companies have come together and enabling us to try and measure methane out in the paddock as we're weighing it. So that's pretty exciting stuff in a number of ways. Again, we haven't got the results back from that. We've done the

research or provided the data. And the data that we provided to them, all those animals were tested have full EPDs on their intake, on their feed- to- gain ratio, their residual feed intake, plus all the other traits. So it's going to be really interesting to see what relationship there is between methane output out on grass and intake and feed conversion and residual feed intake. So I sit with bated breath.

and more milk. The type of animal that is very, very good at producing large amounts of milk over a long period of time, as a male steer is not that desirable of a beef product and is quite the focus on the milking every day, and the time that that takes and the energy that that takes for dairymen, they really don't want to do any other stuff. They don't have

time for other stuff. So trying to care for these, sort of the male part, they have to have that female have a calf each year or every year and a

half or whatever it is. So the calf being produced, only recently have we got sexed semen, which I'm sure is helping a bit, but that male side was hard to know what to do with it and it was hard to make money out of it. And unfortunately, history tells us that if there wasn't a decent market for them, those

animals just had to be eliminated from the system. And society, as we've gone along, says, " Nah, you can't create a baby calf and then not let it live its best life, I guess." And you can't go into that space without worrying about how that's done. So yeah, there's been a big shift within that industry to work out how to use that product, if it be a product out of the dairy industry, is those male calves and

that's where the dairy beef part came in. So the crossing those, with full analysis of knowing which are your superior females with the advent of sexed semen, then putting sexed Friesian semen or dairy semen into the superior females to breed your replacements, do that. And then the rest, why not put it into beef? You only need so

many replacements, the rest is a byproduct. And the dairy beef product has the ability to finish and mature in a more acceptable time, in a more efficient time. And then trying to make that dairy beef product as good a quality. They worked out that the meat quality is actually not bad, that comes from the Friesian side, so as long as we're attending to that from both sides,

the product you get in the end. So there's a whole world being developed now around that. America's going great guns, New Zealand's going great guns. It's tougher in Australia at the moment I think, but they're working on it. So the biggest hindrance in that place is who's going to look after that calf, from one- day olds to say whenever it can start eating grass, and that can

be two months, three months, four months. So it's that space, having somebody who's got an economical model that they can do that efficiently and have calves coming from all over Australia. And how do you get them in that

frequent flow? It's not a lot of numbers when you think that the cows are calving over a long period of time and trying to get those calves from that place to the facility in an economical way and then being able to make money out of the big job of keeping baby calves alive and then to a point that

they can move on to the next stage. So in America they're doing that because of numbers, they can start to close that loop and go straight from the dairy calf to a product is what they're working on. I don't know whether it's relevant to the discussion, but just there's a little part in there that I think is worth mentioning, that some people might call it clever accounting, but the reality

is in a dairy beef product, the emissions that that product has to be responsible for, which is the 12 months of the cow's life, which we know in that system is about 70% of the emissions that has to go to the product. So it's not only the emissions that come from that calf from the time it's born, whether it be beef, dairy beef or dairy, that calf has his own emissions from the time it's born until when

it reaches product on a shelf. It has to account for the emissions that come from the cow that bred it as well. It's got to have somewhere to land. It can't stay with the breeding enterprise, they'd go broke. So that's well established all around the world that has to go with it. The part with the dairy beef product is that that amount of emissions that the cow is responsible, some of it can go to the milk and some

of it can go with the beef. So it makes dairy beef product a low emissions product just by its simple existence. Now you might say that's clever accounting, it's just the way the system works. And there'll be people who'll be in that space that will communicate that, as dairy beef being a low emissions product and the science will back it. And that's fine. We shouldn't be scared of that.

We should jump on that. We should go with that, very excitingly and say here's a beef product that's low emissions and we can keep adding to it. And that can be the premium stuff, if you like, and the other stuff. But to differentiate ourselves from that and say it's

not true is just ridiculous. We need to take that positive energy and run with it and it's very exciting for the beef industry and stuff that we can learn from that and add on to, I think is really exciting.

So final questions then. What are some of the learnings that you've gained over the years of doing this and what do you see as the most exciting thing about the future of the beef industry?

into all of those. But just the power of science and the power of trying to be independent in your thought, but also analytical in your thought, and not be scared of the negatives and be responsible in your thoughts to investigate the things that don't fit conveniently with the way you're thinking, or fit conveniently with the way that you think you'll make money and need to make money.

So you make excuses for things because that's how I'm going to make more money. They're all choices about the way you move forward and ethics that you move forward, so that's been a big thing. Not an easy journey and a lot of learnt stuff over time that you're bashed and bashed and bashed over time to eventually come to the terms of going, " Yeah, I think I understand

that now." So yeah, the interesting part I think is in the world of being analytical about the beef industry and the seed stock industry, and not being scared to speak up about those industries or those breeds or whatever, because

none of them are perfect and no one's perfect. And it's also all right to be having discussions about things that affect the future of our industry without the fear of insulting somebody or hurting somebody, because they're very strongly protecting their own brand or their own name or their own financial situation. So it just takes a bit of courage, a bit of pigheadedness, and some would say a bit of arrogance or whatever.

But as long as the questions are right and the questions have purpose to benefit the people that we're in business to serve, which is the commercial industry, then we should always be doing that, and we should always, always

do that. They should be doing it. The reality is they've got plenty of other things to be doing that they're concentrating on, and it's very easy for the seed stock industry just to keep on doing the same old thing or do the things that benefit us the best

without doing a true analysis and being strong. Unfortunately, like the previous generations in the seed stock industry did, that the next generation now don't have to worry about it because they're making a lot of money under the model that is. Why would you change it? Why would you change a model that's making you a lot of money?

And I understand that, and it's a perfectly natural behavior that people in all industries all around the world do all the time. Doesn't make it right. And so especially when you're looking at that part about making commercial producers more profitable, we need to keep analyzing that and checking on it and working out ways, can we do it better?

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star review. It really helps other farmers find the show. I'm your host, Neroli Brennan, and I'll chat to you next time.