Brent and Anna Fisher are only too aware of the need for beef cattle to be competitive with other land uses.
Based on the Canterbury Plains, they operate the Silverstream Charolais stud, but also run commercial finishing beef and dairy grazers on 540ha of irrigated land and a 400ha hill block.
Brent is the first to admit beef finishing on irrigated pasture has not been economic, especially compared to dairy grazing which offers cash-flow without the capital outlay, animal health, or transport costs.
Only way is up
Brent and Anna Fisher live and breathe the beef industry. With such a significant investment in their farm business, they are determined to help develop systems which make beef finishing competitive with other land-use options, all the while growing a product that is more consistent in quality and taste.
A big part of this is ensuring there is a market for calves from commercial beef breeders who are not able to finish calves within their own business.
“From a straight out economic point of view, the industry has to do a whole lot better.
“If we can’t do better, who is going to finish calves?”
So, last year Brent and Anna joined forces with Professor Jim Gibbs from Lincoln University to set up a trial to try and finish beef cattle to export grade at 13-14 months of age, using fodder beet for an extended period.
Gibbs has carried out a lot of research into using fodder beet in the dairy industry, and believed the feed held a lot of potential in the beef industry.
The 107 calves in the trial – a mix of beef breeds – were weaned early (in mid-February) off commercial hill country farms on Banks Peninsula and sent straight to the Fishers.
The first of these calves were killed prime at 270kg carcaseweight (CW) in December – at around 14 months of age – and the whole lot will be long gone before their second winter.
A pleasing initial result – Brent and Anna will be repeating the process again this year, and will be tweaking the management to try and refine an early finishing system.
“We will definitely be doing it again this year.
Two-year-old cattle should be the last animals going into the premium end of the beef market, Brent and Anna Fisher say.
Anna believes there is a lot of research going into improving genetic performance in beef cattle but little being done at creating an efficient environment at the finishing end.
“Improving genetic performance is being done in vain if we cannot do the last part more efficiently.”
Brent would like to see information shared throughout the value chain to highlight where efficiencies can be made for the benefit of the whole sector.
“If you don’t know how your stock has performed it is hard to make improvements.”
Taking the lead
The information – growth rates and carcase data – that Brent and Anna Fisher have been able to feed back to the commercial breeders has been welcomed, and it is this sort of information flow that the couple would like to see more of.
“I think there is potential in the industry to do so much better – it’s crying out for more vision and leadership.”
While Brent commends the meat companies for what they have done for beef with premium grades, he believes they should be showing more leadership.
They need to take a collaborative approach to make the beef industry more efficient and competitive.
Brent and Anna talk a lot about developing systems, which benefits everyone along the supply chain.
For example, early weaning benefits the hill country farmer in improved reproductive performance in their beef cows, while early finishing makes beef finishing an economic land-use option.
“There is potential to lift onfarm productivity if you have the systems in place to do that.”
Brent points out that early beef finishing has advantages over dairy heifer grazing in that on a May to May contract, the R2 heifers are eating a lot of feed in that second autumn – feed which cannot be carried through into winter.
If finishers can get weaner calves on to fodder beet over autumn and winter, and then take advantage of spring grass, they can have them finished by February.
“This means they can build up a feed wedge going into winter which is a real advantage that grazing heifers does not offer.”
There are so many options farmers could explore if they have systems in place that make it worthwhile, says Brent.
From a meat quality point of view, Brent believes two-year-old cattle should be the last animals going into the premium end of the beef market.
Lack of consistency has long plagued the beef industry, and Brent says there is potential to extract more from the market for top end beef.
He feels the carcase information does not tell the finisher a lot. He believes it could be extrapolated out so finishers know which animals grow the most high quality cuts and get paid accordingly.
Premiums are more of a feel-good factor rather than an incentive to produce top quality product.
“With market signals farmers will find a way of producing what is needed.”
