The
newsletter is a little early this week as Fran is on leave for the week and I
am out of the office from 12.30 today. The office will be closed for the
remainder of this week.
An
ongoing discussion since we introduced docility scoring and EBVs for docility
is about how much of a calf’s behaviour is learnt from the mother. Some
breeders have claimed that most of a calf’s behaviour is learnt from the
mother.
This morning I received from my counterpart
at NALF,Kent Anderson, a copy of a research paper titled “Maternal effects on
docility in Limousin cattle”which has been submitted to the Journal of Animal
Science for publication. The research was carried out by a group of scientists
at Colorado State University on the bank of docility scores provided by North
American Limousin breeders since 1995.
In
a nutshell the conclusion of the paper was that the maternal (learnt) effects
were so small that the inclusion of maternal effects in the genetic evaluation
of docility in Limousin cattle is not warranted. In other words when a flighty cow produces a flighty calf, the
genes she (and the sire) have passed on to the calf play a much greater role
than what the calf has learnt from the dam’s flighty behaviour.
Interestingly
they also calculated the heritability of docility from this dataset and it is
exactly the same as was recently calculated from the Australian data at 0.38
On-Dit is
coming
Agrigene are pleased to announce that semen from a new French bull
On-Dit should be in the country by the end of October
On-Dit comes out of the extensive French progeny test program and has
impressive figures particularly for calving ease (index of 111) and fertility
(index of 111) and milk (index of 109) of his daughters.
On-Dits male progeny have good muscular development. His daughters are
deep with lots of volume and size. They have excellent maternal qualities both
in fertility and calving ability, with high milk production.
Enquiries to Chris McIlroy at Agrigene ph 0357 222666
Prominent
lot feeder, Robert Gill who feeds a lot of Limousin and Limousin cross steers
and heifers for high quality butchers in Sydney always enters some of the
better steers in the hotly contested Merriwa Show Steer competition where the
locals set out to topple him. It did not happen this year with Robert taking
out the Champion pen, the Reserve Champion pen and the Grand Champion steer
last weekend. The winning steers were by bulls purchased from Warren and
Carlene Scifleet’s Mimosa and Black Opal Limousin studs at Binnaway NSW.
REMINDER
Open Day at Kaludabah Limousins on Saturday, September 30 starting 9.30
am
Guest speakers, Dr Kath Donoghue, Geneticist, who will speak on the
Genetic Correlation between measures of docility in Australia, France and North
America, and Katherine McClelland, Business Manager, Pfizer Animal Health to
speak on The Impact of herd productivity of Bovine Pesti Virus and Brett
Littler, Beef Cattle Officer from the Department of Primary Industries to speak
on muscle scoring in cattle and the latest researchby the DPI
Everyone is welcome to attend, we’ll have a BBQ about 12 noon, Mudgee
is in the middle of it’s Wine Festival so you may like to taste some wines
while in the area. Please let us know if you are coming for catering
purposes. Phone 02 63 732222 or email kalrural@bigpond.com
In last weeks newsletter I said that one of the
steers in the third placed O’Conner Shield at the Adelaide show was owned by
the Galpin family. In fact it was bred and prepared by the Modra family from
Limek Limousins at Bordertown SA. Sorry boys!
In
the week earlier newsletter I referred to Sheree Knox as the judge of the 16th
Annual Hunter Valley Limousin Sale. It was Donna Knox who did the judging. (she
does have a sister Sheree). The day before Donna also judged the hoof section
of the Quirindi Prime Stock Competition. She did a pretty good job there also
putting Limousin cross animals on top in three of the six classes.
Winner
of class 1 was a Limousin X Angus exhibited by Umina (BWSC). The same
exhibitors took out class 4 with another Limousin X Angus and class 6 with a
heifer of the same breeding. The top six places in this heifer class went to
Limousin and Limousin X heifers
A
total of 11 of the 18 ribbons went to Limousin or Limousin cross animals.
26th September: QTL Tramahler Bull Sale, Rockhampton, Qld
(catalogue on the web).
29th September:
Stevens Limousins Female and Bull Sale, Birriwa, NSW (catalogue on the
web).
27th
October: Fernlea Complete Female
Dispersal, Warragul, Vic.
24th
November: Classic Limousin Female Sale,
Culcairn, NSW.
29th
January 2007: Premier and Partners in
Progress Production Sale, NSW.
21st
February 2007: Mandayen 2nd Limousin Performance Sale, Furner, SA.
23rd
February 2007: White Lakes Limousin & Angus Bull & Female Sale,
Brunswick, WA.
1st
March 2007: Donna Valley Annual Bull Sale, Holbrook, NSW.
Yours in Limousin
Alex McDonald