Rebecca aims to breed profitable cattle to thrive in northern Australia, while addressing social concerns and environmental signals. Rebecca travelled to 14 countries during 2019 as part of her research to discover how to further optimise her herds genetic progress in traits of importance, especially those that drive profit and are not recognisable by eye, eg fertility, feed efficiency, carcass yi...

There have been significant changes in consumer dynamics in light of Covid-19 with 2020 turning out to be a year nobody could have predicted. We are all aware of the impact Covid-19 has had on our day-to-day lives, with everything from panic buying in the supermarkets and working from home to high unemployment and school closures. All of this has led many people to re-evaluate their needs and pri...

Background Agriculture is being redefined, as we shift focus from production and productivity, to the three pillars of sustainability, Profit, People and Planet. The way we produce food and the impact this has on our wider environment will be critically important for providing a ‘licence to farm’ and for reversing current trends in climate change, while feeding our human population. This shift w...

Introduction Calving heifers for the first time at two years of age has been commonplace in many beef producing countries since the 1970’s; however, in the UK it is estimated that only 40% of suckler herds carry out the practice, with the average age at first calving being 32.8 months (BCMS, 2019). When we compare ourselves globally, the UK suckler herds cost of production is significantly highe...

Maddux Cattle Company is a diversified 134-year-old cattle ranching and farming operation in southwest Nebraska. The ranch consists of roughly 45,000 acres, 30,000 acres of deeded land (27,000 rangeland 3,000 farmland) and leases roughly 15,000 acres consisting of cornstalks for winter grazing. The ranch receives around 18 inches of precipitation annually. The ranch is a combination of a third ha...

Take Home Messages Genome editing refers to the use of site directed nucleases (e.g. Zinc finger nuclease, TALENS, CRISPR/Cas9) to introduce targeted alterations into genomic DNA sequence. It offers a way to repair genetic defects, inactivate or knock-out undesired genes, or move beneficial alleles and haplotypes between breeds in the absence of linkage drag. Genome editing would synergistically...

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with a warming potential more than 28 times that of carbon dioxide (CO2). But when it comes to livestock and climate change, there are many other characteristics that set it apart from CO2. Here are an important four: It stays in our atmosphere for about 12 years It’s derived from atmospheric carbon, such as CO2 It’s part of the biogenic carbon cycle It eventua...

Introduction 2020 has been a difficult year for everyone, both in the UK and overseas. Repeated lockdowns and restrictions on businesses, as well as coronavirus itself, have caused panic buying, cupboard filling, widespread foodservice closures and difficulty with labour on farm and in processing units. The strain placed on both food supply chains and consumers has been unprecedented in peacetime...

Forde Grange goat farm was first established in 1996 and replaced an existing cow dairy herd. The cow unit was a third herd and part of Childhay Manor Farm owned and managed at the time by my father Tim Frost. Milk Quota had become very expensive to both buy or lease and the alternative of goat milk production looked like a market which had long term potential. Establishment was most challenging ...

Summary Actiphage® is a new test that can directly detect the presence of the bacteria that cause bovine tuberculosis and Johne’s disease, so this test is more linked to culture-based methods of detection. Other methods to diagnose these infections rely on detecting different aspects of the animals’ immune response; either tests that detect cell-mediate immune responses, such as those detected by...

My farming career didn’t begin until 2010 when at the age of 36 I returned home to Aherla to what is now Rathard Holsteins. At the time the herd comprised of fifty cows grazing 240 days a year producing 270kgs milk solids per cow. The herd was spring calving with a 31- week calving spread and a calving interval of over 400 days. No AI was being used on farm with a Friesian stock bull being used to...

Would you like to take a trip with me in a time machine? While Genus-ABS may have access to a lot of new and emerging technology, we don’t actually have a time machine. However, if you will use your imagination, you can take a trip with me to view the past, present and future of some of the many advancements in the dairy industry, made possible by genetic improvement. Along the way, we will visit...

Introduction There is a growing desire to extend the productive lifetime of dairy cattle. Extensions of productive life could be good economically, and also have benefits for environmental sustainability and society’s view of dairy farming. Productive life is generally defined as the time from first calving to leaving (exiting, culling) the herd because the cow is deemed no longer sufficiently pr...