There are now 8,330 performance recorded Stabiliser females in 78 herds across Britain and NI, and while the numbers remain small, it is still significant growth since the first embryos were introduced into Britain in the late 1990s by the Beef Improvement Group (BIG) in Yorkshire.
To market and develop the breed in the UK, the group formed the Stabiliser Cattle Company (SCC). The company is responsible for all aspects of breed development. It insists that all pedigree animals are performance recorded through Signet, and the group has managed to retain central control over the sale of pedigree females and bulls. It is that central control which has meant that the breed also has a clear focus to select improved efficiency and, ultimately, more profitable suckler cows.
Stabilisers are a four-way composite based on maternal beef breeds and designed to maximise the production benefits that result from cross-breeding. They were developed by Lee Leachman in the USA and based on research done in Nebraska. The original Stabiliser was a four-way cross between red Angus, Hereford, Simmental and Gelvieh. While the composite has evolved in recent years, the three primary breed inputs continue to be Angus, Simmental and Gelvieh.
In Northern Ireland, a number of leading suckler producers now have some Stabiliser females in their herd. There is also a Stabiliser herd at AFBI Hillsborough and a 50-cow Stabiliser herd currently being assembled at Greenmount’s Abbey Farm, replacing their herd of Limousin cross cows.
Contact
The main local contact point for Stabilisers is Ballymena farmer Billy O’Kane who runs a herd of 150 suckler cows.
He is a strong advocate of the breed, having introduced Stabilisers into his herd in 2005 as a replacement for continental cross cows. Since then, he has taken 100kg off his average cow weight, is able to keep up to 15% more cows per hectare and produces an average of 96 calves per 100 cows put to the bull (the NI average is around 83). The result is 31.5% more calves weaned per hectare.
According to the SCC, improved cow fertility and longevity, lower feed, vet and labour costs, and the ability of the Stabiliser to calve at two years old, translate into a saving that could be worth up to £383 per cow, or £38,300 for a 100-cow herd.
Last week, O’Kane hosted an open day for local farmers. Also speaking at the event was BIG technical director Richard Fuller and Dr Jimmy Hyslop, a beef specialist from the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC).
The main person driving forward breed improvement in Stabilisers is BIG technical director Richard Fuller. For 35 years, Fuller was farm manager at the Givendale Farm in Yorkshire, a 1,200-acre beef, sheep and arable unit owned by JSR Farms.
In the 1990s, Givendale was well-known for its 100-cow pedigree Charolais herd. Bulls produced on the farm were used as terminal sires on a separate herd of 100 Angus Friesian cross cows.
However, according to Fuller, the Angus cows became more difficult to source, and were gradually replaced by Limousin cross Holsteins. “These cows had loads of milk, but a high energy requirement, and they were structurally poor. After four calves, they faded away. They were a disaster,” said Fuller.
That prompted a decision by Fuller, along with other large neighbouring suckler herds, to try to find another cow type. But they were unable to source a consistent suckler animal, prompting the decision to look at the Stabiliser.
The current Stabiliser breeding programme is managed by the Beef Improvement Group, with all pedigree cattle performance recorded through Signet. That allows a bank of data to be collated. New bloodlines are sourced from Lee Leachman annually and there is also central performance testing undertaken on up to 150 young bulls each year. This helps to identify the top 1% of the breed, which are then bred back to top-end heifers.
The result is that significant progress is being made, with the average Stabiliser now 20kg heavier than it was in 2008, while keeping other traits, such as calving value, constant.
The danger with selecting for growth and muscle is that you also increase birth weight (calving value) and therefore end up with more difficult calvings.
In a suckler beef unit, up to 70% of the feed input is associated with the breeding cow herd, and anywhere between 60% and 90% of feed input in suckling is used to maintain the animal. Therefore, when measuring how efficient a system is, the focus should be on the amount of feed input required for maintenance as well as the amount required to drive growth.
According to Dr Jimmy Hyslop from SAC, the other factor to be assessed is the efficiency of cattle in finishing systems (for the same feed input, some thrive better than others), with a variation in individual animals worth up to £50 per head.
To assess efficiency, Hyslop advocates the measurement of net feed efficiency (NFE) rather than the more conventional food conversion ratio (FCR), which is simply the amount of dry matter intake divided by the weight gain. “Selecting for FCR would inevitably mean you breed bigger and bigger cows,” suggested Hyslop.
However, NFE takes account of the size of the animal, its growth rate and also the degree of carcase fatness.
NFE in Stabiliser cattle is the main focus of a £1.2m five-year research trial involving the BIG, SAC and Keenan at its central test facility at Wold Farm in east Yorkshire. The study began in 2012, with the aim to measure NFE in batches of 80 young bulls or finishing steers over a 12-week period.
The trial is now halfway through and, to date, 395 young Stabiliser bulls (10 to 13 months) and 198 finishing steers (15 to 19 months) have been assessed in the study.
To illustrate the work,
Hyslop presented results from 80 steers (Batch 6 through the project). It showed that NFE (kilos of dry matter intake per day) ranged from -2 (highly desirable) to +2 (undesirable). In other words, the animal with an NFE of -2 consumed 2kg less dry matter per day than would be expected given its size, rate of growth and carcase fatness.
When putting the 80 steers into three groups for NFE (low, medium and high), the steers in the ‘‘low’’ group cost £22 less to feed per head over the 12-week period than the steers in the ‘‘high’’ group. “If you apply that over a 12-month period, it is a difference of £88 per head, or the difference between profit and loss in a finishing unit,” Hyslop said.
Follow-up work has also shown that selecting for lower NFE does not have an impact on meat-eating quality. The aim of the project is to use the data to develop an estimated breeding value (EBV) for NFE.
The NFE project has allowed Jimmy Hyslop to make a direct comparison between the performance of young bulls and steers. Young bulls have significantly higher liveweight gains from the same feed intake. According to Hyslop, it translates into a 20% lower cost per kilo of gain.
He has also looked at the eating quality of beef from young bulls compared with steers. “For bulls between 12 and 15 months, there is no issue with eating quality. The data is there to prove it,” he said.
Comparison
Mean liveweight: Steers 578kg; young bulls 591kg.Daily liveweight gain: Steers 1.47kg/day; young bulls; 1.84kg/day.Fat depth: Steers 7.4, young bulls 5.2.DM intake: Steers 12.81; young bulls 12.80.Food version ratio: Steers 8.8; young bulls 7.1.In Northern Ireland, Billy O’Kane is a multiplier herd for the SCC and is therefore the main local source of Stabiliser genetics. He is also keen to develop links with farmers who buy genetics from him and has a small group up and running, who share technical information as well as buying some inputs together.
The group has developed a supply chain link through ABP and Asda.
There are now 8,330 performance recorded Stabiliser females in 78 herds across Britain and NI, and while the numbers remain small, it is still significant growth since the first embryos were introduced into Britain in the late 1990s by the Beef Improvement Group (BIG) in Yorkshire.
To market and develop the breed in the UK, the group formed the Stabiliser Cattle Company (SCC). The company is responsible for all aspects of breed development. It insists that all pedigree animals are performance recorded through Signet, and the group has managed to retain central control over the sale of pedigree females and bulls. It is that central control which has meant that the breed also has a clear focus to select improved efficiency and, ultimately, more profitable suckler cows.
Stabilisers are a four-way composite based on maternal beef breeds and designed to maximise the production benefits that result from cross-breeding. They were developed by Lee Leachman in the USA and based on research done in Nebraska. The original Stabiliser was a four-way cross between red Angus, Hereford, Simmental and Gelvieh. While the composite has evolved in recent years, the three primary breed inputs continue to be Angus, Simmental and Gelvieh.
In Northern Ireland, a number of leading suckler producers now have some Stabiliser females in their herd. There is also a Stabiliser herd at AFBI Hillsborough and a 50-cow Stabiliser herd currently being assembled at Greenmount’s Abbey Farm, replacing their herd of Limousin cross cows.
Contact
The main local contact point for Stabilisers is Ballymena farmer Billy O’Kane who runs a herd of 150 suckler cows.
He is a strong advocate of the breed, having introduced Stabilisers into his herd in 2005 as a replacement for continental cross cows. Since then, he has taken 100kg off his average cow weight, is able to keep up to 15% more cows per hectare and produces an average of 96 calves per 100 cows put to the bull (the NI average is around 83). The result is 31.5% more calves weaned per hectare.
According to the SCC, improved cow fertility and longevity, lower feed, vet and labour costs, and the ability of the Stabiliser to calve at two years old, translate into a saving that could be worth up to £383 per cow, or £38,300 for a 100-cow herd.
Last week, O’Kane hosted an open day for local farmers. Also speaking at the event was BIG technical director Richard Fuller and Dr Jimmy Hyslop, a beef specialist from the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC).
The main person driving forward breed improvement in Stabilisers is BIG technical director Richard Fuller. For 35 years, Fuller was farm manager at the Givendale Farm in Yorkshire, a 1,200-acre beef, sheep and arable unit owned by JSR Farms.
In the 1990s, Givendale was well-known for its 100-cow pedigree Charolais herd. Bulls produced on the farm were used as terminal sires on a separate herd of 100 Angus Friesian cross cows.
However, according to Fuller, the Angus cows became more difficult to source, and were gradually replaced by Limousin cross Holsteins. “These cows had loads of milk, but a high energy requirement, and they were structurally poor. After four calves, they faded away. They were a disaster,” said Fuller.
That prompted a decision by Fuller, along with other large neighbouring suckler herds, to try to find another cow type. But they were unable to source a consistent suckler animal, prompting the decision to look at the Stabiliser.
The current Stabiliser breeding programme is managed by the Beef Improvement Group, with all pedigree cattle performance recorded through Signet. That allows a bank of data to be collated. New bloodlines are sourced from Lee Leachman annually and there is also central performance testing undertaken on up to 150 young bulls each year. This helps to identify the top 1% of the breed, which are then bred back to top-end heifers.
The result is that significant progress is being made, with the average Stabiliser now 20kg heavier than it was in 2008, while keeping other traits, such as calving value, constant.
The danger with selecting for growth and muscle is that you also increase birth weight (calving value) and therefore end up with more difficult calvings.
In a suckler beef unit, up to 70% of the feed input is associated with the breeding cow herd, and anywhere between 60% and 90% of feed input in suckling is used to maintain the animal. Therefore, when measuring how efficient a system is, the focus should be on the amount of feed input required for maintenance as well as the amount required to drive growth.
According to Dr Jimmy Hyslop from SAC, the other factor to be assessed is the efficiency of cattle in finishing systems (for the same feed input, some thrive better than others), with a variation in individual animals worth up to £50 per head.
To assess efficiency, Hyslop advocates the measurement of net feed efficiency (NFE) rather than the more conventional food conversion ratio (FCR), which is simply the amount of dry matter intake divided by the weight gain. “Selecting for FCR would inevitably mean you breed bigger and bigger cows,” suggested Hyslop.
However, NFE takes account of the size of the animal, its growth rate and also the degree of carcase fatness.
NFE in Stabiliser cattle is the main focus of a £1.2m five-year research trial involving the BIG, SAC and Keenan at its central test facility at Wold Farm in east Yorkshire. The study began in 2012, with the aim to measure NFE in batches of 80 young bulls or finishing steers over a 12-week period.
The trial is now halfway through and, to date, 395 young Stabiliser bulls (10 to 13 months) and 198 finishing steers (15 to 19 months) have been assessed in the study.
To illustrate the work,
Hyslop presented results from 80 steers (Batch 6 through the project). It showed that NFE (kilos of dry matter intake per day) ranged from -2 (highly desirable) to +2 (undesirable). In other words, the animal with an NFE of -2 consumed 2kg less dry matter per day than would be expected given its size, rate of growth and carcase fatness.
When putting the 80 steers into three groups for NFE (low, medium and high), the steers in the ‘‘low’’ group cost £22 less to feed per head over the 12-week period than the steers in the ‘‘high’’ group. “If you apply that over a 12-month period, it is a difference of £88 per head, or the difference between profit and loss in a finishing unit,” Hyslop said.
Follow-up work has also shown that selecting for lower NFE does not have an impact on meat-eating quality. The aim of the project is to use the data to develop an estimated breeding value (EBV) for NFE.
The NFE project has allowed Jimmy Hyslop to make a direct comparison between the performance of young bulls and steers. Young bulls have significantly higher liveweight gains from the same feed intake. According to Hyslop, it translates into a 20% lower cost per kilo of gain.
He has also looked at the eating quality of beef from young bulls compared with steers. “For bulls between 12 and 15 months, there is no issue with eating quality. The data is there to prove it,” he said.
Comparison
Mean liveweight: Steers 578kg; young bulls 591kg.Daily liveweight gain: Steers 1.47kg/day; young bulls; 1.84kg/day.Fat depth: Steers 7.4, young bulls 5.2.DM intake: Steers 12.81; young bulls 12.80.Food version ratio: Steers 8.8; young bulls 7.1.In Northern Ireland, Billy O’Kane is a multiplier herd for the SCC and is therefore the main local source of Stabiliser genetics. He is also keen to develop links with farmers who buy genetics from him and has a small group up and running, who share technical information as well as buying some inputs together.
The group has developed a supply chain link through ABP and Asda.
This is a subscriber-only article
SHARING OPTIONS: