Our annual Open Days are a great opportunity to be updated on the genetic progress being made by the Merinotech nucleus and Ram Breeding Centre flocks as well as to hear from guest speakers.
Join us for our upcoming Open Day!
When: Friday 10th October from 9:30am
Where: ‘Marbarrup’, 122 Wahkinup Road, Scotts Brook WA
What: Our Open Day presentations will be focused at farm-level including;
Whole-body energy – John Young, Farming Systems Analysis Service
John Young will be talking about incorporating whole-body energy into the breeding objective. Last year at the Open Day, Dr Mark Ferguson from neXtgen Agri covered the background of the ‘why’ of whole-body energy and the research that has been carried out with animals from the Merino Lifetime Productivity site at Pingelly, WA. This research is moving forward and this year John will cover the ‘how’, ‘what’ and ‘when’ with a little extra ‘why’ that has been uncovered in the last 12 months. John will talk about how whole-body energy can be incorporated in an index, how much selection pressure to apply, what needs measuring and when. This will include a picture of how the sheep that is being bred is likely to differ after 10 years of breeding and the changes this may mean to your management.
Eating quality of lamb – Dr Graham Gardner, Murdoch University
The Meat Standards Australia system for predicting lamb eating quality is about to metamorphous across Australia. Historically this system has relied upon a set of production and processing rules to ensure that consumers are supplied with lamb of reliable eating quality. However, in response to industry calls, this system is transitioning to a new model that will enable processors to differentiate the eating quality of every carcase. Like the beef MSA model, this requires individual carcase measurements such as carcase weight, carcase lean percent (or GR tissue depth measured in millimetres) and loin intramuscular fat percentage. This individual carcase measurement will massively improve the accuracy and commercial flexibility of eating quality prediction.
The new model for predicting eating quality has existed for about 5 years. However, until recently it could not be deployed as the carcase measurements that inform it could not be acquired in a commercial setting at abattoir chain speed. The main limitation was intramuscular fat percentage which can only be measured using an accredited technology. However, this has all changed in the last few years with a raft of new technologies achieving accreditation to measure these values. Graham’s presentation will provide an update on the MSA lamb model and describe the new technologies that measure the traits necessary to predict eating quality.
Merinotech update – Dr Amy Lockwood, neXtgen Agri
Amy will provide an update on the Merinotech nucleus and Marbarrup Ram Breeding Centre flocks, including performance data collected over the past year and the genetic progress being achieved.
