Meat processor meetings

As meat processors are predicted to be responsible for only 3% of the lamb carbon footprint I was very impressed by everything this processor is doing to reduce the lamb carbon footprint. But I guess as it has one of the largest plants in the world (slaughtering 32,000 lambs a day at peak season) some might say it should be leading the way. It has introduced many processing energy efficient programmes and alternative energy projects in the plant as well as encouraging on farm production efficiencies. This includes Viascan for yield grading assisting with on farm management decisions. There is an yield bonus on a per lamb qualifying basis, if they get 80% + lambs qualifying they get paid more if they meet target yields for leg, loin and shoulder within the correct weight. Producers receive annual reports on how their yield performance varies from year to year and where they sit compared to averages. This processor has also carried out many trials with genetics, diet, growth rates, yield and castration status to asses production efficiencies and meat quality traits. Forage type appears to have the greatest effect.
They are also involved with the central progeny testing programme to improve on farm production efficiencies using animal genetics to prove the genetics of the ram comparing how his progeny perform relative to progeny from other rams under the same conditions. A meat value index is created from these information gathered at the abattoir in a monetary value with the top ram $5.45. The top performing ram has a combined meat and growth index of $6.89!
There is also a facility that farmers can pay for postmortems, collect liver samples for Trace element analysis and worm egg counts to identify any efficiency problems the health of the animals my have on those remaining on farm. 
They are also currently developing a farm based Carbon footprint calculator. This has been rolled out across producer groups. The farmer enters the data on a web based system and it may be audited. 
Farmer suppliers already have to minimise land and waterway degradation and responsibly dispose of chemicals and containers under the farm assurance programme. Over 90% are farm assured and are audited every every 18 months by the processor and every 3 years independently. The antibiotic free claims are audited the same time as the farm assurance audits.
There is great focus on stock cleanliness. If a proportion are dirty a letter is sent to farmer with photographs and deductions are taken. Mostly no farm assurance premium and this will be removed for the future. They may even stop slaughtering that group. They request that stock must be taken off feed a minimum of 12 hrs before transportation for improved presentation and hygiene. The livestock transport accreditation programme also has some strict requirements, it requires trucks to have effluent tanks and dispose of waste responsibly. All animals transported in New Zealand have to have an Animal Status Declaration, similar to the AML form but with some very different questions e.g. have the animals been imported, have they been fed anything other than milk and pasture!
I was surprised that the plant only runs for about 6 months  most years with peak season lasting 4 months, with the boning rooms working an extra few months. However the scale of this site allows it to be very efficient when it is running. Carcasses can be allocated to chillers and boning rooms according to fresh lamb, aged lamb, chilled lamb, mutton or portion cutting and carcass weight and fat score to make sure waste is reduced. Meat leaves the site in containers on energy efficient rail and international transport mostly by sea freight.

South Island

As I landed in Queenstown I wondered if I had flown to another country. The South Island of New Zealand has had totally different weather than the North Island. They have not had much rain for two months and had numerous fires and very little grass growth. Many farmers have needed to sell animals early. Selling stores when they normally finish them. Many crops that have been planted are unlikely to establish very well and is predicted to be problems for the winter feed. However I seem to have brought the rain with me. My first visit on the South Island was to one of the largest stations in NZ. The station has 100,000 stock units. 38,000 ewes over 32,000 acres. The ratio of sheep to cattle is 70:30 with income 65:35. This is influenced by the stud, they sell 350 Angus bulls each year. The cattle are only really kept to groom pasture for weaning lambs onto and parasite control. They are thinking about growing this to 700 as one bull client has asked for 400-500 bulls annually. The cattle stud has been electronically tagged since 2005. The commercial herd has not but they have been EID tagging calves for the last two years. The stud measures 17 traits - calving ease, gestation, birth weight, 200 day weight (gives milking ability), 400 & 600 day growth rates, Carcass data (weight, eye muscle, rib fat, rump fat, IMF, retail beef yield), mature cow weight etc. A cow has to have a weaned calf at half its body weight e.g. 520kg cow has to wean a 260kg calf. If not they are not kept. They aim to kill steers at 18 months with a target kill weight of 300kg deadweight, 560kg liveweight. The finishing cattle are weighed once every 6 weeks and they check if they are not hitting the targets if there is a problem with worm burden or pasture. The mating target for heifers is 325kg at around 14 months and sometimes they are nearer 390kg. They have an annual sale of surplus in calf yearlings (350 heifers). They fatten and finish the barreners.
The sheep enterprise sells around four to five thousand lambs a week and aim to get them all out by March to focus on getting the ewe hoggets up to weight to go to ram and to get good grass for the ewes pre tupping. All the ewe hoggets go to the ram and they don't keep anything that doesn't go to the ram. They put 10,000 hoggets to the ram with an aim of 80% conception rate.
At weaning lambs are split through the auto drafter four ways at weaning 33kg + are killed, 30-33kg go in one group to keep an eye on and weighed regularly to see when they will be ready, then the next group are 26-30kg and then the under 26kg group, the bottom two groups wont be given much attention for a little while. They will be weighed again 8 weeks after weaning. These are not EID tagged the shedder just does it according to weight. The lambs that went to the works at weaning this year had an average carcass weight of 17.5kg. After weaning they take them through to 44kg.
The 1,500 stud ewes are run slightly different to the station ewes. All ewes and lambs on the genetic unit are EID tagged at birth.  The priorities for selecting rams are survivability, reproduction, growth, meat, dag, parasite resistance/resiliance. If there are any bad mothers or other negative remarks given to them over lambing they are killed. Before weaning they take a sample weight and aim to get an average weight of 30kg at 85days weaning. DLWG are often up at 300g with the singles sometimes up nearer 400g. The rams are sold on farm and they mostly sell 300-400 rams a year. I asked about the clients focus and 90% focus on records. Many of them are now looking at the meat trait, growth and survival with some looking at reproduction value and dags.
Animal health issues are slightly different down here to some of the farms I visited up north. Barbars pole worm or facial eczema is not a problem down here. However Nematodirus in lambs is an issues on the south island. This farm carries out regular fecal egg counts. On the stud they try to stretch out worming to cull tailenders. They would drench when about 10-20% are struggling when the rest are thriving. Every time they take a cull, weigh and look at figures per sire, number of culls per sire and weight per sire to see if they want to use that sire next year. They use 500 of the stud ram lambs on the station to assess them and check their condition after tupping. If they are in bad condition or are not happy with their performance they are not sold on as Rams.

Wellington

The first meeting I had in Wellington was with an organisation that has a number of focus farms working with EID technology. The aim of the seven year R&D programme is to make the industry more sustainable. There are currently 8 focus farms and 250 farms using the database (cattle, lambs and deer). They are planning on increasing the focus farms to 12. The focus farms are a cross section in terms of geography and farming type. The focus farmers are the drivers, making decisions what they would like to get out of the project and they get assistance on how to achieve it e.g. what information they need to record etc. Most farmers are recording weights and animal health, DLWG, groups of animals, forage and animal health. These farms host a couple of field days a year where they discuss financial issues and implications, animal health and agronomy. The focus farmers also meet a couple of times a year. The database holds information from the abattoir on individual lamb basis including Grade, x-ray weight, rib count, % hind, % middle, % fore. It was interesting to see how this varied. Other things they are looking at is taste, tenderness, aroma, colour, juiciness. It was interesting to see the taste panel results from a number of forages. On two crops the females were a lot worst than the males for taste. They were slightly better than males on some other crops. But not to the same extent.

The second meeting I had in Wellington we discussed the importance of agriculture in NZ and this is the reason why so much focus is on reducing green house gas emissions. There are some options but they are to expensive and not significant enough. The cost of them does not make practical sense. Their three main aims are to enhance productivity, reduce methane and nitrous oxide and explore international opportunities. Discussions revolved around similar topics covered in Palmerston North.  We discussed how the sheep decreased from 55 million in 1999 to 33 million with the same number of lambs produced so emission intensity has decreased in the sheep industry, however dairy cattle have increased from 3.5 million to 6 million, while beef cattle have stayed similar. Generally dairy are responsible for 40-45% emissions while beef and sheep are responsible for 55-60%.

Palmerston North - GHG's

After meetings with six different scientist I have certainly learnt a lot about greenhouse gas emissions in Palmerston North.                            As New Zealand is such a green country, agriculture and in particular ruminants are responsible for a large amount of the greenhouse gas emissions in NZ and this is the reason why so much research is being carried out here. They all felt strongly that many things that had been suggested, are not as good as they are sometimes made out to be and have not always worked when they tested it in the chambers. They may work on the laboratory level but they need to get it to work on the animal level. There are three main ways of testing it on an animals level, FS6, greenfix and the chambers. They found that FS-6 is quite variable and not replicated in chambers. Chambers are more accurate. Since they first installed the chambers they have compared lambs and ewes, grass quality, lactating ewes, cattle and sheep, beef and dairy cattle and done some alpaca work. The greenfield system is more accurate than PS2 but there are issues with some animals going in more regularly than others and concentrates are not used that much in NZ. 

They feel the four challenges are manipulating rumen function, reducing nitrous oxide emissions from soil, manipulating the rates of soil carbon change and creating tools for farmers decision making. The six key objectives are:
1.Rumen microbial ecology and rumen microbial strategies to reduce methane emissions
2. Methanogen genomics
3. Methanogen vaccines
4. Exploiting animal to animal variation
5. Low GHG emitting farm systems
6. Nitrous Oxide Mitigation
The main area of research and progress has been with nitrous oxide. Applying DCD can reduce nitrous oxide by 70%. The problem is breaks down at 12 degrees celcius. The next biggest break through has been finding low and high emitting ewes. These have been mated with low and high emitting rams and they are investigating this further with the offspring. There is 9-40% difference in animals. However heritability has a low value.

They have also found variation in pasture (high sugar grass and brassicas lower emissions). One trial showed that brassicas reduce emissions by 20%.
They are working on vaccines and inhibitory compounds to raise antibodies in animals against the gut bacteria that produces the methane. The question is is this successful how much will the vaccine cost and will it be worthwhile. Carbon trading is also a reason for research in this area and a lot of decisions remain to be made. It is likely that the processors will be the point of obligation e.g. milk factory, meat processor etc rather than the 40,000 farmers. This will reduce it to around 300 points of obligation and average it out across the farmers. It may be possible for farms to claim they are better than average but then this creates a lot of work to prove it. Improving intensity may reduce liability. There is now becoming more of a focus on emission intensity. Emission intensity has been reduced in the sheep sector by over 20% as they have 20 million less sheep but the same amount of lamb produced. However intensification and dairying has increased Nitrous Oxide emissions.

Farm visit - Featherstone

This farm visit focused around breeding as they sell over a thousand rams each year to 150-160 clients. In the 80's they averaged 14 rams per client but as people have increased fertility in their flocks people are purchasing less Romneys and more terminal sires. People also now have a higher ewe to ram ratio. All rams are sold on farm. About half of them go to the South Island, of which many go to the Gore area. They have 4,600 ewes fully recorded to 70 different sires. These are all recorded electronically. They said it was costly but it has saved a lot of man hours. They have two electronic weighers and automatic shedders that divide up to five different ways. The ewes are set-stocked for lambing. They said that tagging at birth can be a difficult job. 730 lambs were tagged one day last year. The lambs are docked at 160%. They also keep 15% more two tooth's than they require to have a good bunch to select from and then the surplus are sold on farm. They feel that this year is the best for twenty to thirty years considering the good spring they have had and the price of the animals. New season lamb is currently $7.40 per kg compared to $6.11 in January 2011 and $4.58 in January 2010. They are predicting that hoggets may sell for $250 this year (£125). Old ewes are currently worth $4.50-$5 at the works and ewes going through market are making $150+ (£75+)

We discussed their breeding policy and how they have been involved in developing the gene marker for Footrot resistance and facial eczema. However, their selection emphasis is on three key priorities, early growth rate, lamb survival and internal parasites.
We also discussed shearing and the best time to shear the rams so that they have about two inches of wool when they are sold, to have wool long enough to see what the wool is like, but short enough to see what the animal looks like. Barbar's pole worm and facial eczema seems to be less of a problem the further south I go. Facial eczema may occur once every ten years on this farm.
300ha of the farm is irrigated. This is the area that most of the crops are grown and lambs are finished.  One fifth of this is put into Chicory each year. The irrigated paddocks are split into 3.5-4ha.
They also buy in steers, currently on the farm there are 400 two year olds nearly finished and a further 400 to finish next summer. They know there is not much money in doing this but know they are good for pasture management and worm control, and again this is the main reason for cattle on the farm.

Masterton Farm Visits

The first farm I visited in Masterton feels that EID is central to the operation's decision making and allowing them to farm with maximum efficiency. The farm carries 10,000 stock units. 6,300 ewes scanning at 194%. All lambs are finished on the property. Ewe lambs are sent away and come back as 2 tooths. Some ewes are also on other farms and he pays people to look after them on a per head basis, but he goes to do the major jobs.  He also runs 240 Angus breeding cows, mated to Angus bulls, These are also finished on farm from 18-24 months. The cattle are predominantly there to support the sheep policy. All animals are EID tagged. Information such as singles, twins, triplets, mothers age, sire breed, drench/health records, weights and yields from abattoir are all recorded on the system. The main thing he uses it for is to compare weight on lambs that have received different treatments under the same environmental conditions, for example some lambs are given B12 and some left without to compare. He has also compared lambs on different pasture and lambs on crops were 3kg heavier than those on grass. He has also found that lambs grow better on some crops, however the yield is better from other crops. This has made him change the system to move the lambs onto certain crops just for the last couple of weeks to get better yields after they have been on the crops to improve growth rate. The automatic drafter is used at weaning to draft three ways depending on daily liveweight gain. If its growing well on grass he doesn't see any point on moving it on to more expensive crops. The automatic drafter was doing 500 per hr, however he has added more to the selection criteria and its now only doing 350 per hour this year. The lambs are weighed 10 days after putting them on crops to check they are improving, if  they aren't doing well, theyare put on a different feed. EID is used to select replacements; selceting multiples, and those with good DLWG. 3000 are sent to another grazer soon after weaning and underperforming ones are taken out. He thinks EID is the best tool on the farm for calculating, measuring and analysing data and ultimately informing financial policy changes. 

The focus of the second farm I visited is Ram breeding. They are part of an improvement group that sells the majority of the Romney rams. This farm runs 2000 romney ewes, of which 800 are fully recorded. The scanning percentage has been around 170% for a number of years. They winter around 300 recorded ram  lams and sell around 100 rams each year. They said they really need to sell more rams to be viable and worthwhile recording. All lambs are tagged at birth and remarks are noted such as bad maternal instinct, small, dead, weak etc which would would make them not considered for future breeding. The next record taken is the weaning weight, then the eight month weight and the fleece weight at shearing. A percentage is taken out at weaning if they have low DLWG, wool is marked, daggs etc. No lambs are kept from ewes that don't catch in the first cycle. Rams are sold in November at 13/14 months to use in March/April. Some are also leased out in February. All rams are sold on farm on a one to one basis. They also sell females for further breeding. Facial eczema is less of an issue here than further north, however it is still considered in their breeding and they have purchased a ram that has good values for this. They also winter over 100 cattle, 57 breeding cows and the rest are finishing animals. The cows are Angus cross Hereford and an Angus bull is used. The farm is usually summer safe however a couple of years ago they sold all the cattle due to the drought and only last year purchased cattle again. The cattle were sold to save the sheep. Again cattle are not that important to the farm.

Abattoir visit - Hawke's Bay

The scale and efficiency of this abattoir was very impressive, slaughtering 12,000 a day. 10 per minute. They have 2 lines and each line slaughters 4,000 in the morning shift and then the evening shift starts at 4pm through to 11.30 when only 1 line runs. This is only a lamb and mutton abattoir and sometimes veal. It was interesting to compare this abattoir with the one I visited in Australia. I felt this one in NZ is more similar to the UK than the Australian abattoir. The security was very strict and they required identification of who I am and what I do before they would show me around. No dogs are allowed in the lairage, lambs can arrive anything up to an hour before they are slaughtered, especially at the moment when they are short of lambs. Due to it being a good growing season and plenty of grass around many farmers are holding on to the lambs to get them heavier. The animals are all slaughtered according to Halal with a lot of meat being exported to the Middle East. 90% of the meet is exported to many countries around the world. There was very little wastage. Some livers are condemned due to facial eczema, liver fluke or c. tenicolis. These are all sent to be made into dog food. Most carcass weights were between 16.5kg-19.5kg at this abattoir today. There were some 22kg but these were over fat and the farmer is penalised for this, unlike in Australia. Some carcasses are exported whole, however the majority go to the boning room. As the carcasses go into the boning room they go through a X-ray machine that calculates where to cut them into the three sections to get the best value for the carcass. The yield of each third is fed back to the farmer. This allowes the farmer to see what area he needs to focus his breeding on.