Neroli Brennan: This is Seeds for Success, a show where we have
Neroli Brennan: a good yarn about ag life with producers who are
Neroli Brennan: having a go. On the show, you'll hear from farmers
Neroli Brennan: in New South Wales who are out there battling the
Neroli Brennan: elements, making tough calls, and getting the job done. You'll
Neroli Brennan: get a laugh out of some of their stories and
Neroli Brennan: also pick up some know- how along the way. I'm
Neroli Brennan: your host, Neroli Brennan. Today we're continuing our conversation with
Neroli Brennan: Jon Wright from Coota Park Blue- E. In our last
Neroli Brennan: episode, Jon shared his journey from cattle research to creating
Neroli Brennan: his own line of Blue- E cattle on his property
Neroli Brennan: Coota Park at Woodstock. Jon explained how refining genetics and
Neroli Brennan: collecting individual animal data has allowed him to develop the
Neroli Brennan: most feed- efficient herd in the world. But in today's
Neroli Brennan: episode, Jon delves into the world of EBVs and how
Neroli Brennan: important this information is for refining our beef production system.
Neroli Brennan: He also shares with us how he's collaborating with researchers
Neroli Brennan: at Sydney Uni and ag tech developers to help improve
Neroli Brennan: our understanding of how technology can be used for adopting
Neroli Brennan: solutions that lower on- farm emissions, and allow us to
Neroli Brennan: meet customer expectations. So join us as Local Land Services
Neroli Brennan: mixed farming officer, Claudia Hinrichsen, continues her chat with Jon
Neroli Brennan: at home on Coota Park.
Claudia Hinrichsen: So just back to the feed efficiency testing, how do
Claudia Hinrichsen: you get problems with shy feeders? How do you manage that?
Jon Wright: It's all in the system. It's all in the way
Jon Wright: you manage the trials and the trial's design. And the
Jon Wright: sort of standards that we've set up were all to
Jon Wright: get as many animals onto feeds, they have a 21-
Jon Wright: day adjustment period, that's to get the animal used to
Jon Wright: the diet and also get to using the facility. And
Jon Wright: so you need that 21 days to ensure that you've
Jon Wright: got the largest percentage of animals that you've presented to
Jon Wright: the trial in the first place, starting off on day one,
Jon Wright: fully adapted to the feed and using the feeders. It's
Jon Wright: remarkably easy. As we've gone along, I was very protective
Jon Wright: of that and did everything I possibly could to ensure that we
Jon Wright: got the maximum number on there in the new feeding
Jon Wright: systems and things that just it's really quite simple. So
Jon Wright: the diet that we use is not a high energy
Jon Wright: diet, so it's not a risky diet to bring cattle
Jon Wright: onto. It's a high protein, moderate energy diet, which is
Jon Wright: suitable for growing young bulls. So yeah, the shy feeder
Jon Wright: thing isn't a problem in the sense of adjusting and then
Jon Wright: getting them on. The system has a natural thing in
Jon Wright: there; if a bull has reduced intakes for three or
Jon Wright: four days, he just falls out of the trial. He
Jon Wright: can stay in the pen there and keep eating. Certainly
Jon Wright: we would take him out if he was not well,
Jon Wright: but if he just has three days where his intakes
Jon Wright: go down a bit, he's got a bit of a
Jon Wright: flu or a fever or something like that and then comes back
Jon Wright: on, system doesn't care. He's just eliminated from the trial
Jon Wright: and you don't get data on those bulls, which is
Jon Wright: a good check to have in the system and that's
Jon Wright: the design. You don't get to say, " I'd like that
Jon Wright: bull to go in, please." They go, " No, these are
Jon Wright: the rules," which is good.
Claudia Hinrichsen: So you have touched on this a little bit, but
Claudia Hinrichsen: what is, I guess, the evolution of your genetic selection?
Claudia Hinrichsen: You mentioned earlier offline that you've just added some Santa
Claudia Hinrichsen: genetics. Can you just describe how you started and the genetics?
Jon Wright: Yeah, so it was just a Shorthorn Angus cross. 27 years ago
Jon Wright: they were very different breeds. The Angus was what you
Jon Wright: would call a smaller early- maturing breed. The Shorthorns were
Jon Wright: a larger later- maturing breed at different stages of their
Jon Wright: development as breeds. To me, it seemed to be a
Jon Wright: logical mix. Also, at that stage, all the research had
Jon Wright: shown the value of marbling and how important that was.
Jon Wright: And so they were the two best marbling breeds at the time.
Jon Wright: They had advantages in being combined, obvious to put in
Jon Wright: a European breed at the beginning. At that particular stage,
Jon Wright: 27 years ago, the population of the Europeans in Australia
Jon Wright: was relatively small. Some of them had some big dramas
Jon Wright: as far as different things, temperament or structure, fertility, carving,
Jon Wright: things like that. So it just didn't seem logical to bring
Jon Wright: those in. We were trying to be based on getting
Jon Wright: animals from large performance recording herds, that had a history
Jon Wright: of performance recording, again, not so great in those smaller
Jon Wright: breeds. So that's where we stuck, wherever it was. 18
Jon Wright: years later, as far as I could see, that had
Jon Wright: changed dramatically. So the American Simmental Association had made a
Jon Wright: big shift in the way... They were very bold and
Jon Wright: very responsible as an organization in the direction that they
Jon Wright: took the breed. As a society, they looked at themselves
Jon Wright: and said, " What are our weaknesses and what are our
Jon Wright: strengths?" Looked at those and said, " We've got to work
Jon Wright: really hard at fixing these things or we won't be
Jon Wright: relevant," or they were already becoming irrelevant, I guess. So
Jon Wright: it was a really bold thing they did. At the same
Jon Wright: time, a lot of the breeders thought... saw the power of the
Jon Wright: black. And so in America as in Australia, it's about
Jon Wright: a black skin gets them into particular brands. So weirdly,
Jon Wright: but anyway, the Simmentals predominantly changed themselves from being a
Jon Wright: red and white breed to a black breed. Whether it
Jon Wright: was their intention or not, 20 years later, now that
Jon Wright: they've changed themselves to black by incorporating Angus and creating
Jon Wright: a multi- trait, multi- breed type animal, the animal that they have
Jon Wright: now is far superior to the original product. Now it
Jon Wright: might be controversial to say, the product that has ended
Jon Wright: up from that crossing, is it more superior to both
Jon Wright: Angus and Simmental, the original breeds? I'd be bold enough
Jon Wright: to say I think it definitely is. But it's not
Jon Wright: the point, it's just that they're pretty good multi- trait
Jon Wright: animals and useful to use in a breeding index to
Jon Wright: make more profitable commercial cattle. So we started to look
Jon Wright: at those and going, " I'm being a bit hypocritical, I'm
Jon Wright: being like a breed society. No, I'm only Angus and Shorthorn cross,
Jon Wright: I'm only Blue- E. We won't bring anything else in."
Jon Wright: And so I had to sort of walk the walk
Jon Wright: a little bit and act in a way that we
Jon Wright: had talked in for a very long time. So it
Jon Wright: was about looking at those genetics, saying there's good ones
Jon Wright: there. They'd attended to the problems that I was always
Jon Wright: fearful about with that breed, and there was lots of
Jon Wright: them out there, with really good performance recording information on
Jon Wright: them, to enable us to be making the right decisions.
Jon Wright: So then we started bringing some of those in. More
Jon Wright: recently, not on a general way for the whole Blue-
Jon Wright: E program, but we have been asked by a corporate
Jon Wright: to breed a Blue- E cross animal with some Indicus
Jon Wright: content, so the bulls can go further north. So we're
Jon Wright: doing that for that client. We have no intentions of
Jon Wright: marketing those bulls at this particular stage outside that, unless
Jon Wright: there's demand. But it's interesting. That's really another whole discussion
Jon Wright: to go into all of that side of things. How
Jon Wright: we identify those animals genetically and do an analysis is
Jon Wright: really interesting and presenting us with some challenges and we're
Jon Wright: up for a challenge. But the cattle look good, they
Jon Wright: look really exciting. Again, it's just breeding an animal for
Jon Wright: a client at this particular stage, but there's a big
Jon Wright: number of cows up there in the north and there's
Jon Wright: a lot of genetics that is going up there at
Jon Wright: the moment, which is, I don't know, the science always said they were the wrong color to
Jon Wright: be going into those environments. I think they're working really
Jon Wright: hard on that and some of that science may have
Jon Wright: evolved. But the thing that worries me a little bit
Jon Wright: is some quite big mature cow size genetics going into
Jon Wright: those climates. It's quite logical that you shouldn't. It surprises
Jon Wright: me that that's what's happening and that's a car crash
Jon Wright: waiting to happen and I hope people can be really,
Jon Wright: really careful in doing that. And it's about seed stock
Jon Wright: producers being responsible for the genetics that they're breeding, not
Jon Wright: being just pleased that a bull's gone and they've sold
Jon Wright: it and they've told a great story, thinking really seriously
Jon Wright: about their own children's future in the seed stock industry
Jon Wright: that they're in and whether they're going to have a
Jon Wright: future in breeding that type of cattle. Because once the
Jon Wright: word gets round, if fertility is starting to be worked
Jon Wright: against, up in that environment they've got enough problems, they don't
Jon Wright: need more problems. So if cows don't survive in that
Jon Wright: environment, they're going to find out.
Claudia Hinrichsen: Definitely. So when you introduced the Simmies, were there temperament issues?
Jon Wright: Of the European breeds, they're one of the ones that
Jon Wright: had probably a lesser of a worry in it. Look,
Jon Wright: I don't generalize in breeds too much in the sense
Jon Wright: of there's good and bad in everyone, and it's usually
Jon Wright: created by people in the background of those seed stock.
Jon Wright: People blame indexes for things or breeds for things, and
Jon Wright: it's not the breed and it's not the index, it's
Jon Wright: the people behind them that breed them. So yeah, there's
Jon Wright: good and bad breeders out there, and always we still
Jon Wright: work on temperament in our cattle very strongly and you'll
Jon Wright: always get a little bit of it, and as long
Jon Wright: as you knock it on the head and don't accept
Jon Wright: it into the pool, then you're hopefully heading in the
Jon Wright: right direction. So no, like seriously, there was no dramas
Jon Wright: in that sense. I had probably more dramas coming from
Jon Wright: the existing two breeds than I do from Simmentalers as
Jon Wright: traits coming in, which I was sort of trying to
Jon Wright: fight against or have to be aware of. Not to
Jon Wright: perpetuate those traits as they come through in any major
Jon Wright: way is their mature cow size, their feed efficiency, their
Jon Wright: fertility, those sort of things, longevity, those really important traits
Jon Wright: that are hard, were hard to shift, hard to measure,
Jon Wright: but really, really important. I'm more concerned about those ones
Jon Wright: than I am about any of those other ones.
Claudia Hinrichsen: So you moved away from the Angus Australia BREEDPLAN EBVs as
Claudia Hinrichsen: it had some limitations for crossbred genetics. What system do
Claudia Hinrichsen: you use now and can you explain it a bit?
Jon Wright: We shifted away from the Angus multi- breed register, and
Jon Wright: so when the American Simmental Association and Leachman Cattle Company
Jon Wright: in America, both at similar times, developed these multi- breed
Jon Wright: performance recording systems, it seemed really logical. They didn't care
Jon Wright: what breed you were, you could come on. They would
Jon Wright: take the information and history of those and all, certainly
Jon Wright: the whole pedigree and the pedigree performance information on the
Jon Wright: animals and use that. So we insisted that they take
Jon Wright: the lot of ours as long as we'd been going.
Jon Wright: And the only reason that we went predominantly with Leachman
Jon Wright: was because they incorporated feed efficiency into their analysis, whereas
Jon Wright: the American Simmental system's IGS weren't and still aren't doing
Jon Wright: feed efficiency. So as much as I loved the people
Jon Wright: involved with that and the whole process, I couldn't not
Jon Wright: be including feed efficiency in our analysis after putting so
Jon Wright: much work into it. So that's where we ended up
Jon Wright: with Leachman. Leachman is a family business in America that's
Jon Wright: been going for a very, very long time, they're fourth-
Jon Wright: biggest bull seller in America now. They sell three and
Jon Wright: a half, 4, 000 bulls a year, composites, pure Angus,
Jon Wright: pure Red Angus, pure Charolais. The family business doesn't own
Jon Wright: a lot of land, they have cooperators that they work
Jon Wright: with and those cooperators are collecting all the data and putting it.
Jon Wright: And he decided to start up a performance recording system
Jon Wright: in conjunction with universities that did the independent analysis for
Jon Wright: him and that's where we went. To me, it's just
Jon Wright: a performance recording system. They all work relatively well. It's
Jon Wright: just an analysis, so you can argue which one's right
Jon Wright: or wrong and that sort of stuff. I just don't care
Jon Wright: about that. I just want my data analyzed properly. You'll have
Jon Wright: some individual emphases on different traits in indexes and all
Jon Wright: that sort of stuff. Anyway, we went with Leachman and
Jon Wright: he seems to be growing. The data that's coming out
Jon Wright: of it is identifying our animals well. It takes you
Jon Wright: a little bit of time to get the confidence in
Jon Wright: it. We've really got great confidence in the data that's coming
Jon Wright: out of it, and incorporating DNA analysis. Now, the whole
Jon Wright: 50K stuff, all our animals are going into, into the
Jon Wright: analysis and the data from the DNA is accepted into
Jon Wright: the analysis that produces the EPDs that we can now
Jon Wright: look at. So that's really exciting and we've just done
Jon Wright: our whole cow herd. So taken DNA from every single
Jon Wright: cow and haven't got the data back from that yet,
Jon Wright: but it's going to be very interesting. And what's interesting
Jon Wright: is, I think it's going to identify our cattle better
Jon Wright: so we can make better decisions to breed better cattle.
Claudia Hinrichsen: For sure. Hopefully it complements that phenotypic data. So it
Claudia Hinrichsen: sounds like you finally found the right fit for you.
Jon Wright: Well, it's good. It's good and it's exciting. As I say,
Jon Wright: he's made a real focus on the feed efficiency side,
Jon Wright: and was only discussing it with him last week. We
Jon Wright: have eight feed intake recorders here, eight bunkers, so we
Jon Wright: can do about 240 bulls a year in our own
Jon Wright: testing facility. He has 300 intake recorders associated with his
Jon Wright: genetics now, so that's pretty amazing. And he's talking that
Jon Wright: they're already starting to develop a EPD for methane and
Jon Wright: recording that sort of stuff. There's a whole world in
Jon Wright: that and another whole discussion about how that all should
Jon Wright: roll, but he's onto it. He may not get a
Jon Wright: lot of support from his new president in that area,
Jon Wright: to be trying to help the beef industry reduce its
Jon Wright: emissions, but certainly something that I'm pretty passionate about.
Claudia Hinrichsen: Sure. So just honing in on the genetics a little
Claudia Hinrichsen: bit more, can you explain the trait residual feed intake
Claudia Hinrichsen: and how heritable is it?
Jon Wright: Oh god, this is hard.
Claudia Hinrichsen: Sorry.
Jon Wright: Been doing it for 28 years and it hasn't got any easier,
Jon Wright: even longer. No, look, it's really simple. It's just based
Jon Wright: from the point that we all understand really simply and
Jon Wright: really easily gross feed efficiency, which is just how much
Jon Wright: feed does an animal eat to put on a kilo
Jon Wright: of weight? And so that's gross feed efficiency. So do
Jon Wright: you have a converter that's 4 to 1, or 5
Jon Wright: to 1, or 6 to 1, or 7 to 1?
Jon Wright: When we started that range was there, you were going
Jon Wright: from 5 to 1 to 10 to 1, was the
Jon Wright: average. We've obviously closed that average in. We still go
Jon Wright: back to that trait of gross feed efficiency, it's the
Jon Wright: thing we're trying to shift. What we understood and what
Jon Wright: the researchers understood from previous work in other species, that
Jon Wright: if you just go on that gross feed efficiency figure, your
Jon Wright: animals will just get bigger and bigger and bigger. And
Jon Wright: that's what happened in the poultry industry, happened in the
Jon Wright: pork industry, where you had these animals were so big
Jon Wright: that their hearts couldn't even pump the blood around their
Jon Wright: bodies or their immune systems just couldn't cope with the
Jon Wright: mass and the volume. So the wisdom of all of
Jon Wright: those other industries and the researchers at the time, that
Jon Wright: we need to take growth out of the equation or
Jon Wright: out of that genetic link and make it independent. And
Jon Wright: so not taking growth out of the story, but just
Jon Wright: if you select for feed efficiency, you're not necessarily selecting
Jon Wright: for growth. Go to your growth EPDs or EBVs and
Jon Wright: select where you want to, but it won't be directly
Jon Wright: linked. So residual feed intake was just a simple method
Jon Wright: that was developed to say, let's just look at each
Jon Wright: individual animal and say how efficient are they for an
Jon Wright: animal of that particular size growing at that particular rate?
Jon Wright: So it just takes those out, it adjusts for those. And
Jon Wright: so if it's a smaller animal, not growing as fast but
Jon Wright: not eating as much, it can still rank just as
Jon Wright: well as a fast- growing animal that's not eating much
Jon Wright: relative to its size and its growth rate. So you
Jon Wright: can have those two animals ranking first and second in
Jon Wright: your test. You then just go to your growth traits
Jon Wright: and say, " Oh, that animal is not what I'd like
Jon Wright: to breed from. Whereas this animal may be more to
Jon Wright: it." I've thought about it a lot, talked a lot
Jon Wright: over a long period of time, and it's just the
Jon Wright: responsible way to shift feed efficiency in a genetic population
Jon Wright: over the time, is the best way for doing.
Claudia Hinrichsen: Makes sense. So we might move on to some of
Claudia Hinrichsen: the other cool stuff that you have done here or
Claudia Hinrichsen: are doing here. Can you tell us a bit about
Claudia Hinrichsen: your work with the legend Luciano Gonzales from Sydney Uni
Claudia Hinrichsen: and also Optiweigh in the methane space?
Jon Wright: Yeah, so just to go back a little bit in
Jon Wright: the sense of me sitting in my office, Googling on
Jon Wright: the computer, searching through things and seeing one, that figure
Jon Wright: that said the beef industry's responsible for as much emissions
Jon Wright: as the whole transport industry. Now whether that's true and
Jon Wright: whether the calculations are right and blah, blah, blah, it doesn't
Jon Wright: matter. I read that and went, " Holy mackerel, what are you
Jon Wright: talking about there?" And then sort of just trying to
Jon Wright: look more through into that space and go, " Why is
Jon Wright: that?" And it's that part about methane, which is no
Jon Wright: one's fault, no one's did anything wrong, but the science
Jon Wright: says that methane is methane, and how that as a compound
Jon Wright: acts and where it goes, and it's ability to sit
Jon Wright: up there and form a blanket and refract really strongly
Jon Wright: heat back into our atmosphere is just what happens. We
Jon Wright: can't change that science, that's just there. So going through
Jon Wright: and thinking about all of that stuff and ensuring that,
Jon Wright: one, the information was right, and that's all you can
Jon Wright: do is just keep reading and reading and looking and
Jon Wright: searching. And again, what I said before, make sure you're
Jon Wright: searching for the stuff that disproves your theory as well
Jon Wright: as proves your theory. And if you're not thinking in
Jon Wright: both ways, you're not really being responsible in it. So
Jon Wright: it was a long time about reading and thinking and
Jon Wright: finding the right time to actually start talking about it,
Jon Wright: because it certainly was not something that was talked about
Jon Wright: in the industry. In fact, it was quite controversial to
Jon Wright: talk about it. And so as somebody who was selling
Jon Wright: a product, that I wanted to communicate with people about
Jon Wright: how good our product was, if I started talking with
Jon Wright: that language, potentially people were going to call me an
Jon Wright: idiot or whatever it was, which all of it was
Jon Wright: probably true, but we decided to just find the time
Jon Wright: and do it slowly and quietly and professional. We just
Jon Wright: started to do it and I had lots of conversations
Jon Wright: in pubs at night and dinner parties and birthday parties
Jon Wright: and whatever, annoying the hell out of people. 'Cause I wanted
Jon Wright: to find out what people thought and what their reactions
Jon Wright: would be and what their part was. Anyway, so the
Jon Wright: next step for us was to say, " Well, we better
Jon Wright: see if we can collect some data in this area
Jon Wright: and see if we can collaborate with some people to
Jon Wright: help us try and work it out." And once you
Jon Wright: sort of got to the stage that you accepted the
Jon Wright: science and then started to accept the potential risk to
Jon Wright: the beef industry into the future, then it felt like
Jon Wright: a bit of an obligation to get on with trying
Jon Wright: to find out what this science is about and how
Jon Wright: we can identify it and improve it over time and
Jon Wright: then communicate it over time. Which was in all my
Jon Wright: understanding, it's all about the only way if we're going
Jon Wright: to stay here as an industry is if we can
Jon Wright: communicate to consumers that we're just taking a bit of
Jon Wright: responsibility for the small bit that we emit. That's all
Jon Wright: they expect from us. They don't want us to fix
Jon Wright: climate change totally. All they want us to do is
Jon Wright: take responsibility for the small bit and that's what they're
Jon Wright: asking of everybody. So we can sit and whinge and
Jon Wright: feel sorry for ourselves all we like, but that's the
Jon Wright: basic principle of how it'll work. Because we just can't
Jon Wright: communicate with every single consumer and have a little chat,
Jon Wright: or expect them to sit down and watch a video
Jon Wright: or an ad or something. It just doesn't work that
Jon Wright: way. They're not interested in us and nor should they
Jon Wright: be because it's just meat, it's just a bit of
Jon Wright: food. We're not that important. So our collaboration with the
Jon Wright: university sort of came around that space of just, again,
Jon Wright: trying to ensure that we're sticking to the science and
Jon Wright: trying to find out information how we can move forward.
Jon Wright: So luckily we bumped into Luciano, who's at Sydney University
Jon Wright: and worked out some stuff. And so for three or
Jon Wright: four years there we had technology, that I couldn't afford
Jon Wright: but the university had, being able to collect methane production
Jon Wright: from animals in real time whilst also collecting their feed
Jon Wright: efficiency data. So we did that for a long time,
Jon Wright: even as long as we had animals. We tested heifers that
Jon Wright: had then calved down twice and then we tested them
Jon Wright: again on grass out in the paddock with these same
Jon Wright: machines, saying, " Is this feed efficiency stuff that we're collecting
Jon Wright: in pens, is that giving us something that's worthwhile on
Jon Wright: grass in a cow?" 'Cause the majority of emissions come
Jon Wright: from our cows, so unless we concentrate on fixing that
Jon Wright: problem, then we're only tinkering around the sides unfortunately. So
Jon Wright: that data's been collected not that long ago, still to
Jon Wright: be analyzed. It's a little bit frustrating, that we'd like
Jon Wright: to get some results from that. But yeah, some really
Jon Wright: interesting stuff. All the early signs of stuff is saying that
Jon Wright: it's there. The other part that we've just done recently
Jon Wright: was with Agscent. Agscent's a company that's sort of developing
Jon Wright: useful agricultural technology for the beef industry, particularly in measuring
Jon Wright: pregnancy. Taking a breath of the animal into a bag,
Jon Wright: attaching that bag to a machine that measures. And they can
Jon Wright: tell within the first 18 days, I think, whether an
Jon Wright: animal's pregnant or not. There's enormous excitement in the industry
Jon Wright: about what that same machine may be able to do
Jon Wright: in relation to detecting disease in animals, particularly respiratory diseases
Jon Wright: in feedlots and that sort of stuff. But Agscent, as
Jon Wright: a company, then teamed up with Optiweigh. So Optiweigh we
Jon Wright: know is a machine that we can now put out
Jon Wright: in our paddocks. In a commercial sense, it's available at
Jon Wright: a commercial price, that will weigh the animals in the
Jon Wright: paddock day to day over a period of time and
Jon Wright: give us an idea of how they're growing. All that
Jon Wright: information feeds back to your phone and so then you
Jon Wright: can start making some decisions, if they're not growing as
Jon Wright: fast as you'd like, by giving them additives or making
Jon Wright: moves and that sort of stuff. So those two companies have
Jon Wright: come together and enabling us to try and measure methane
Jon Wright: out in the paddock as we're weighing it. So that's
Jon Wright: pretty exciting stuff in a number of ways. Again, we
Jon Wright: haven't got the results back from that. We've done the
Jon Wright: research or provided the data. And the data that we provided to them,
Jon Wright: all those animals were tested have full EPDs on their
Jon Wright: intake, on their feed- to- gain ratio, their residual feed
Jon Wright: intake, plus all the other traits. So it's going to
Jon Wright: be really interesting to see what relationship there is between
Jon Wright: methane output out on grass and intake and feed conversion
Jon Wright: and residual feed intake. So I sit with bated breath.
Claudia Hinrichsen: As do I. That will be very interesting hearing what
Claudia Hinrichsen: comes out of that. So you have also stepped into
Claudia Hinrichsen: the dairy beef space. I see this is such an
Claudia Hinrichsen: exciting emergency industry to address the wastage and animal welfare
Claudia Hinrichsen: concerns around bobby calves. So for those that don't know
Claudia Hinrichsen: much about the dairy beef space, can you tell us
Claudia Hinrichsen: a bit about it and what are the product that they're sort of
Claudia Hinrichsen: aiming for?
Jon Wright: So certainly the dairy beef, it's obviously in that space,
Jon Wright: that dairy industry, is all about the females and how
Jon Wright: much milk they produce. And they've done an incredible job
Jon Wright: to change those animals genetically over time to produce more
Jon Wright: and more milk. The type of animal that is very,
Jon Wright: very good at producing large amounts of milk over a
Jon Wright: long period of time, as a male steer is not
Jon Wright: that desirable of a beef product and is quite the
Jon Wright: focus on the milking every day, and the time that
Jon Wright: that takes and the energy that that takes for dairymen, they
Jon Wright: really don't want to do any other stuff. They don't have
Jon Wright: time for other stuff. So trying to care for these,
Jon Wright: sort of the male part, they have to have that
Jon Wright: female have a calf each year or every year and a
Jon Wright: half or whatever it is. So the calf being produced,
Jon Wright: only recently have we got sexed semen, which I'm sure
Jon Wright: is helping a bit, but that male side was hard
Jon Wright: to know what to do with it and it was
Jon Wright: hard to make money out of it. And unfortunately, history tells us
Jon Wright: that if there wasn't a decent market for them, those
Jon Wright: animals just had to be eliminated from the system. And
Jon Wright: society, as we've gone along, says, " Nah, you can't create
Jon Wright: a baby calf and then not let it live its
Jon Wright: best life, I guess." And you can't go into that
Jon Wright: space without worrying about how that's done. So yeah, there's
Jon Wright: been a big shift within that industry to work out
Jon Wright: how to use that product, if it be a product
Jon Wright: out of the dairy industry, is those male calves and
Jon Wright: that's where the dairy beef part came in. So the
Jon Wright: crossing those, with full analysis of knowing which are your
Jon Wright: superior females with the advent of sexed semen, then putting
Jon Wright: sexed Friesian semen or dairy semen into the superior females
Jon Wright: to breed your replacements, do that. And then the rest,
Jon Wright: why not put it into beef? You only need so
Jon Wright: many replacements, the rest is a byproduct. And the dairy
Jon Wright: beef product has the ability to finish and mature in
Jon Wright: a more acceptable time, in a more efficient time. And
Jon Wright: then trying to make that dairy beef product as good
Jon Wright: a quality. They worked out that the meat quality is
Jon Wright: actually not bad, that comes from the Friesian side, so
Jon Wright: as long as we're attending to that from both sides,
Jon Wright: the product you get in the end. So there's a
Jon Wright: whole world being developed now around that. America's going great
Jon Wright: guns, New Zealand's going great guns. It's tougher in Australia
Jon Wright: at the moment I think, but they're working on it.
Jon Wright: So the biggest hindrance in that place is who's going
Jon Wright: to look after that calf, from one- day olds to
Jon Wright: say whenever it can start eating grass, and that can
Jon Wright: be two months, three months, four months. So it's that
Jon Wright: space, having somebody who's got an economical model that they
Jon Wright: can do that efficiently and have calves coming from all
Jon Wright: over Australia. And how do you get them in that
Jon Wright: frequent flow? It's not a lot of numbers when you
Jon Wright: think that the cows are calving over a long period of
Jon Wright: time and trying to get those calves from that place
Jon Wright: to the facility in an economical way and then being
Jon Wright: able to make money out of the big job of
Jon Wright: keeping baby calves alive and then to a point that
Jon Wright: they can move on to the next stage. So in
Jon Wright: America they're doing that because of numbers, they can start
Jon Wright: to close that loop and go straight from the dairy
Jon Wright: calf to a product is what they're working on. I don't know
Jon Wright: whether it's relevant to the discussion, but just there's a little
Jon Wright: part in there that I think is worth mentioning, that
Jon Wright: some people might call it clever accounting, but the reality
Jon Wright: is in a dairy beef product, the emissions that that
Jon Wright: product has to be responsible for, which is the 12
Jon Wright: months of the cow's life, which we know in that
Jon Wright: system is about 70% of the emissions that has to go
Jon Wright: to the product. So it's not only the emissions that
Jon Wright: come from that calf from the time it's born, whether
Jon Wright: it be beef, dairy beef or dairy, that calf has
Jon Wright: his own emissions from the time it's born until when
Jon Wright: it reaches product on a shelf. It has to account
Jon Wright: for the emissions that come from the cow that bred
Jon Wright: it as well. It's got to have somewhere to land.
Jon Wright: It can't stay with the breeding enterprise, they'd go broke.
Jon Wright: So that's well established all around the world that has
Jon Wright: to go with it. The part with the dairy beef
Jon Wright: product is that that amount of emissions that the cow is
Jon Wright: responsible, some of it can go to the milk and some
Jon Wright: of it can go with the beef. So it makes dairy beef
Jon Wright: product a low emissions product just by its simple existence.
Jon Wright: Now you might say that's clever accounting, it's just the
Jon Wright: way the system works. And there'll be people who'll be
Jon Wright: in that space that will communicate that, as dairy beef
Jon Wright: being a low emissions product and the science will back
Jon Wright: it. And that's fine. We shouldn't be scared of that.
Jon Wright: We should jump on that. We should go with that,
Jon Wright: very excitingly and say here's a beef product that's low
Jon Wright: emissions and we can keep adding to it. And that
Jon Wright: can be the premium stuff, if you like, and the other
Jon Wright: stuff. But to differentiate ourselves from that and say it's
Jon Wright: not true is just ridiculous. We need to take that
Jon Wright: positive energy and run with it and it's very exciting
Jon Wright: for the beef industry and stuff that we can learn
Jon Wright: from that and add on to, I think is really exciting.
Claudia Hinrichsen: For sure. I think once consumers shift their mindset away
Claudia Hinrichsen: from a dairy beef animal being that big huge coat
Claudia Hinrichsen: hanger style animal to something that actually just looks like
Claudia Hinrichsen: a crossbred, really, that might change people's mindsets a bit.
Claudia Hinrichsen: And yeah, certainly a very good marketing draw card there.
Claudia Hinrichsen: So final questions then. What are some of the learnings
Claudia Hinrichsen: that you've gained over the years of doing this and
Claudia Hinrichsen: what do you see as the most exciting thing about the
Claudia Hinrichsen: future of the beef industry?
Jon Wright: Lots of learnings in a personal sense, we can't go
Jon Wright: into all of those. But just the power of science
Jon Wright: and the power of trying to be independent in your
Jon Wright: thought, but also analytical in your thought, and not be
Jon Wright: scared of the negatives and be responsible in your thoughts
Jon Wright: to investigate the things that don't fit conveniently with the
Jon Wright: way you're thinking, or fit conveniently with the way that
Jon Wright: you think you'll make money and need to make money.
Jon Wright: So you make excuses for things because that's how I'm
Jon Wright: going to make more money. They're all choices about the
Jon Wright: way you move forward and ethics that you move forward,
Jon Wright: so that's been a big thing. Not an easy journey
Jon Wright: and a lot of learnt stuff over time that you're
Jon Wright: bashed and bashed and bashed over time to eventually come
Jon Wright: to the terms of going, " Yeah, I think I understand
Jon Wright: that now." So yeah, the interesting part I think is
Jon Wright: in the world of being analytical about the beef industry and
Jon Wright: the seed stock industry, and not being scared to speak
Jon Wright: up about those industries or those breeds or whatever, because
Jon Wright: none of them are perfect and no one's perfect. And
Jon Wright: it's also all right to be having discussions about things
Jon Wright: that affect the future of our industry without the fear
Jon Wright: of insulting somebody or hurting somebody, because they're very strongly
Jon Wright: protecting their own brand or their own name or their
Jon Wright: own financial situation. So it just takes a bit of courage,
Jon Wright: a bit of pigheadedness, and some would say a bit of arrogance or whatever.
Jon Wright: But as long as the questions are right and the
Jon Wright: questions have purpose to benefit the people that we're in
Jon Wright: business to serve, which is the commercial industry, then we
Jon Wright: should always be doing that, and we should always, always
Jon Wright: do that. They should be doing it. The reality is
Jon Wright: they've got plenty of other things to be doing that
Jon Wright: they're concentrating on, and it's very easy for the seed
Jon Wright: stock industry just to keep on doing the same old
Jon Wright: thing or do the things that benefit us the best
Jon Wright: without doing a true analysis and being strong. Unfortunately, like
Jon Wright: the previous generations in the seed stock industry did, that
Jon Wright: the next generation now don't have to worry about it
Jon Wright: because they're making a lot of money under the model
Jon Wright: that is. Why would you change it? Why would you
Jon Wright: change a model that's making you a lot of money?
Jon Wright: And I understand that, and it's a perfectly natural behavior
Jon Wright: that people in all industries all around the world do
Jon Wright: all the time. Doesn't make it right. And so especially
Jon Wright: when you're looking at that part about making commercial producers
Jon Wright: more profitable, we need to keep analyzing that and checking
Jon Wright: on it and working out ways, can we do it better?
Claudia Hinrichsen: Well, Jon, I've loved talking to you, and I think that you're
Claudia Hinrichsen: a true pioneer and a really inspiring and brave farmer,
Claudia Hinrichsen: often broaching topics that people find uncomfortable and really pushing
Claudia Hinrichsen: for a sustainable beef industry into the future with such
Claudia Hinrichsen: unwavering passion over these years. So thank you so much
Claudia Hinrichsen: for joining us on the show.
Jon Wright: Thank you very much.
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