Australian Simmental

ALL-ROUND ‘SUPERIOR PERFORMANCE’

SIMMENTALS MAKING THEIR MARK IN AUSTRALIA

With 2022 marking 50 years of the breed in Australia, we are delighted to include an article from Simmental Australia in The Review. Here Executive Officer Felicity Reeves outlines the bottom-line profitability of the breed with commercial producers, and also the association’s work with International Genetic Solutions to produce genomic EPDs.

As with most of our worldwide societies, Simmental Australia is celebrating its 50th Anniversary in 2022. Since 1972, stud breeders have selected superior animals from Simmental’s enormous worldwide genetic pool and coupled these genetics with selection for adaptation to Australia’s wide range of environments and production systems. The Australian Simmental today has traditional, red, black and sim angus recorded in their register.

The Australian Simmental, is a breed with all-round superior performance when used either as a pure breed or in crossbreeding programs. The genetics are designed to breed a better bottom line for commercial producers. Whether you’re a northern tropical, or a temperate zone producer the advantages of Simmental hybrid vigour include: • More saleable weight…10 to 15% or 25 to 60kg • Trimmer carcases – less waste fat • More muscle • Higher yields of saleable beef • More productive F1 females • Earlier turnoff at desired market weight

The successful development of the Australian Simmental owes much to the skills of stud breeders in pursuing performance selection systems and selection for commercially important conformation and structural traits.

Simmentals in Australia have changed greatly from the first bred in the 1970s, showing great versatility in Australian conditions and meeting buyers needs with the introduction of black and red Angus, and Brahman breeding up to purebred status. The ability is there to satisfy commercial needs whether it be for coat colour and tick resistance in the north, to the milking ability and early maturing in the south, and overall calving ease and low birthweight.

The most recent change in the last few years is the desire for polledness in our cattle. This has led to our DNA requests now including testing for Horn/Poll as a standard.

Sales of pedigree bulls and females have reached very high averages in 2021 with bulls selling for an average of $10,195 (£5,500) with a top of $40,000 (£21,500) and females selling for an average of $6,058 (£3200) with a top of $19,000 (£10,200).

This month (December 2021) we have seen commercial females with calves at foot, sell for an unheard of, $6,050 (£3200) per head, such is the demand on inventory building females after years of drought in Australia.

Our Society is into its second year of being foundation members of The Genetic Hub, with two other Australian breed society’s being Limousin and Shorthorn, where we are shareholders of the company supplying registration and communication services to our breeds and other incoming societies. We plan to also work together on feedlot projects to provide carcase data for our relevant analyses.

In previous years we registered approximately 5,000 calves each year with an inventory of 10,000 females prior to drought. We are currently in a herd rebuilding phase where the demand for females is high, as stated previously. We currently have 420 total members consisting of Stud, Junior Stud, Junior Non-Stud, Life, Commercial and Associate members.

Our focus for 2022 will be on breed development in the genomic world. We have been working on trialling the IGS (International Genetic Solutions) producing genomic enhanced EPDs (Expected Progeny Differences).

The lure of being able to tap into the IGS’s huge reference population is now the subject of our research and development. It has long been an issue that any sire brought into Australia, does not show the same or similar breed values it does in its country of birth, for years, if ever. The linkage that we have within this database cannot be ignored. We have the ability to split our registers to show the true versatility of the breed in a ranking that is deemed closer to the animal in question. We know the different registers have different maturity patterns, calving ease etc where one may skew the other. Splitting these registers and ranking these animals should give us a more accurate breeding prediction. To be able to see how your animals rank, we will also be introducing a new database by CGEN, a Canadian company used by Canadian Simmental. We have done this so we can compare the two breeding value systems to make a final decision in 12 months-time. We will continue to use the ABRI’s ILR2 and Breedplan databases during this period. We will extract all registration and weights and trait data each month into the CGEN database ahead of an IGS run. While IGS is run weekly, we will have new data monthly.

The Breedplan team has also been working hard on bringing us genomic enhanced EBVs and the decision to make that happen is with AGBU at this time. We genuinely hope that this comes to fruition so we can make an informed decision into 2023.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak about the breed from an Australian point of view. We hope to be travelling more freely in the coming year and may see some of you at the World Congress in Austria.

Highest price Simmental bull in Australia was for Woonallee Los Angeles (WEEPL124) selling for $160,000 (£86,000) in 2020

Highest price Simmental female in Australia was for VC Strike (ZMJPR030) selling for $19,000 (£10,200) in 2021.