In this episode of Head Shepherd… 

We welcome Tom Gubbins from Te Mania Angus Australia. Te Mania’s history stretches back to 1928 and the closing of the Angus herd book in New Zealand. Skipping forward a few decades, the purchase by Tom’s parents of 23 cows and a handful of bulls from Frank Wilding brought Te Mania to Australia. The stud has grown significantly since that initial purchase, now counting 900 cows and almost 700 heifers (plus a 500-cow embryo transfer programme). 

To hear more - from EBVs for structural traits, temperament and IMF to methane, heifer maturity and maternal efficiency - listen to the full interview with Tom Gubbins on the Head Shepherd podcast here.

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Predicting the future, then breeding for it

One of the biggest challenges in a bull-breeding programme is predicting which traits will have the greatest impact on profitability for cattle breeders in future years. From production to temperament, structure and welfare, not to mention traits with an environmental impact, there is a raft of traits that breeders are (or may be) looking for, now and in the years to come. Stud breeders have their eye on which way the farming, consumer and investor landscapes are each likely to shift - and the genetics that cattle will need to carry to meet those changing demands.

Tom shares, “We’re always...trying to work out where we need to be in 10 years. Because that’s about how long it takes to get it organised.” Between identifying the potential for a genetic solution and having bulls to sell with the desired genes onboard, there is a lot of measuring and number crunching to be done. He points out that before bull breeders can start to select and breed from animals carrying the desired genes, a robust research project (to collect the necessary data to determine the heritability of the potential trait) needs to be carried out.

Tom highlights the importance of both investor and consumer demand for changes in agriculture - and how that is influencing decisions about the genetic direction of a stud like Te Mania. “At the moment, we're taking a bit of advice from social opinion about animal welfare and climate change. Whether you believe in climate change or not, I think that if you don't think that it's going to change the economics of agriculture in the next 10 to 20 years, then you're missing the whole social understanding of what people want,” says Tom.

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Accountability with Team Te Mania 

Looking at how past breeding decisions have played out in clients’ herds, and whether breeders’ objectives have been met, is another valuable source informing those future predictions. In particular, Team Te Mania has become a crucial sounding board for the business.

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“We’re always...trying to work out where we need to be in 10 years. Because that’s about how long it takes to get it organised.”

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Team Te Mania emerged from one of the large-scale beef research projects in Australia, Beef CRC I. Included in the project were systems for linking and progeny testing in commercial herds, collecting carcass data and establishing the heritability of various traits. Once the funded project wrapped up, Te Mania and their clients who had been involved in the project continued to collaborate, testing progeny, maintaining linkage and building on the existing data. Over time, indexes were generated and the combined information collected from across the group started to have a noticeable impact on the breeding direction. 

It has grown to become a marketing group, as well as an invaluable testing ground for ideas. “We didn't realise at the time, but…having independent businesses who are responsible and accountable for their profit and loss statement, questioning you over the genetic direction... It's quite different from you questioning yourself over your genetic direction. It's…a little more cut throat, as you can imagine.” 

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Genomics - incremental improvement or game-changer?

The arrival of genomics has been welcomed at Te Mania, “...we make fewer mistakes, and that's what accuracy in EBVs is all about. [EBVs] with an estimation and a standard error, which is the accuracy. And the accuracy has improved. Every time you get an improvement in accuracy, the decisions you make are more potent and they stick more. So, you can pull younger animals out and speed the genetic interval more, and with less risk, because you're not going to have as many failures. Even though you may look at it statistically and see the accuracies only come up by 6% or 7%, when you're in the high fifties or the low sixties, to come up 7% is pretty significant. And it has made a huge difference,” says Tom. 

Looking at the future steps, Tom is interested in looking at how to harvest phenotypic information out of data sets that are not being used at present, as well as reconsidering the way genetic evaluations are paid for and how to incentivise breeders to continue to contribute their data. “We've got to do some work in that area to work that out so that the data is rewarded properly and that we don't start losing that nucleus of information,” explains Tom. As improved technology continues to become more accessible, from DNA testing to artificial intelligence, he sees many exciting possibilities ahead for the industry and the role that Te Mania can play in that future.

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“Every time you get an improvement in accuracy, the decisions you make are more potent and they stick more. So, you can pull younger animals out and speed the genetic interval more, and with less risk, because you're not going to have as many failures.”

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Listen to the full interview with Tom Gubbins from Te Mania Australia on the Head Shepherd podcast here.

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