STOCK DAIRY BEEF PROGENY TEST
Oyster season in beef land long term fix. When he worked for a meat company in the late 1990s he talked about working with a customer sitting on your shoulder, and seeing the issues through the eyes of someone buying your by our markets, he says. products. “We can bang out our beef to “It’s a different slant that makes non-discerning customers and you far more consumer focused,” it might not worry them, but he says. as we shift our dairy and beef In addition, he says there is a products further up the value rising tide of bad feeling about chain our more discerning killing so many calves so the customers will not want to see industry needs to front up and Bob Thomson. products from a value chain start talking about how they will associated with the bad news story be reared - make it an opportunity not a around bobby calves.” problem. The AgFirst beef consultant says it’s If all of those calves are going to be fantastic how the industry has improved raised for beef the issue is going to fall to handling practices but he doesn’t see it as a dairy farmers to start thinking about how
Well-bred dairy beef calves could make bobby calves history and be a new high value income stream for dairy and beef farmers, Jackie Harrigan reports.
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eef consultant Bob Thomson can see a time when it will not be acceptable to kill 2.5 million bobby calves each season and he suggests that time is less than 10 years away. But use of the right beef genetics could see a bobby calf problem turned into a high value young tender beef product commanding a premium in export markets. Limited years for bobby calves is the view of a growing number of dairy and beef industry players and it will be driven 86
Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | August 2021
