Angus breeders embrace tissue sampling advances Susan and Roger Hayward, owners of Twin Oaks Angus Station, Te Akau, are proud Angus Pure breeders. While some of their previous ventures included a long stint sharemilking down south, Roger has always had a keen interest in breeding, starting when he bought a few Angus cows when he was 15. He and wife Susan have since found their passion lies in breeding high-quality Angus cattle. They certainly don’t miss the early morning wake-up calls to milk the cows or the arduous task of shifting kale breaks. Four years before Susan and Roger moved their 300 Angus cows from Canterbury to Waikato in 2016, they completed a verification sire parentage trial over the entire bull drop. The results revealed 6 percent were wrong. “We were horrified,” Susan says. Although much less than the industry average of 10-15 percent, it was still a surprise and something Susan and Roger agreed needed to be improved. It reinforced the importance and value of tissue sampling to their Angus stud
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farm and kickstarted their journey with Allflex Tissue Sampling Units.
AT A GLANCE
The Haywards have just finished
Roger and Susan Hayward
calving 400 cows, all calves of which
Location: Te Akau, Waikato
were sampled within 24 hours of being
Calve 400 Angus Pure cows
born. During calving, the duo visit the
Challenges
paddocks once or sometimes twice a
DNA recording accuracy.
day. They tag, weigh and take a tissue
Previous sampling method was time consuming and difficult.
sample of each calf. “The blister packs which Allflex introduced are a game changer,” Susan
Benefits
says. The packs contain the visual and bundled together on a plastic tray.
TSU blister pack, visual tag, EID button and TSU all matched and bundled together.
There is no need to manually label the
Improve recording accuracy.
tag, EID button and TSU all matched
TSU sample, reducing the chances of a
Easy to use TSU applicator.
labelling error. “Tagging, weighing and
Sample stays viable for longer.
sampling each calf can be a stressful and time-consuming task but having the TSU bundled together means you no longer worry there’s going to be mistakes.” Last year the Haywards didn’t know until the results came back that two cows had swapped calves. The testing provides reliable parent verification to help avoid mix-ups and interbreeding. This has allowed the Haywards to find “accurate, true breeders”.
Once calving is complete Susan sends all samples off to be HD50K-tested. The samples remain viable for 12 months. The HD50K is used to read the genomic make-up and that information is then fed into the EBV (estimated breeding value), giving better reliability and accuracy. “Before we used genomes it was a 50 percent calibration – 50 percent
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