Special attributes of Angus breed

Press, 28 March 1981, Page 2

Special attributes of Angus breed

A message was rec-rived’ from the Queen Mother as] pat. _n of the British Aber-[ deen Angus Society when! the Ft urth.World Angus Forum began its final day of formal papers, in Christchurch yesterday. The Queen Mother said that the quality of Aberdeen Angus beef was coming to be more appreciated and this had been demonstrated at the recent Smithfield show when an animal of that breed had carried off the championship. One of the speakers in a session devoted to performance recording in breed improvement and ..research developments was Mr J. J. ] Willms, c c Canada, who bred a bull which is in" the Queen ' Mother’s Castle. Mey herd in 1 Scotland. '

Referring to concern about the marking of beef, Mr idea that it was the disWillrns said people had the tribution of food that was wrong, but he did not agree. He! did ,not think they would have-the problems th?y had

■if there was a proper disjtributioi. of money.

Ano’her speaker yesterday !was Mr William Maitland. W,earing a kilt in his clan tartan, from East Balhalgardy. Inverurie, Scotland, which is only a few miles from Tillyfour, the farm of William McCombie, a famous pioneer of the breed.

Mr Maitland believes that the breed has a special attribute that, fits it into the present worl dscene; its ability to convert cheap roughage foods into flesh. Some breeds, he said, certainly gave big liveweight gains but they needed expensive energy foods to do that. As cereal prices increased it| was not liveweight gain that] they nould be looking at but' the very valuable asset that the Angus had.

"The world food experts continue to tell us that energy foods such as cereals are going to be more and more required to feed the ever increasing world population and that it is wasteful feeding cereals to animals rather than directly to the hungry millions.”

In their recording and selection, breeders should therefore be making this quality of the breed one of their top objectives and not trying to breed a "black Charolais.”

A member of the board of directors of the American Angus Association. Mr Henry Gardiner, pointed to the benefits and dangers that 4s such as performance recording presented for the future.

"I believe that purihred cattle breeding has been a hit-and-miss vocation for the last 100 years,” he said. "It used to be said that if a breeder used one good bull in his lifetime, that was

;about all he could expect. ■ Now it will be possib’ to use a good bull every time we select r. new one and have an idea of ji.st how good he is and for what traits. "Just as a fine chef does not prepare a dish without knowing the amount of each ingredient, so will a {master breeder of tomorrow use all of the genetic information available to him to produce the superior animal.” But Mr Gardiner urged caution in switching to a new breeding concept, where most of the sires were capable of rapid genetic change. "The driver of an ox cart is all of a sudden at the controls of a supersonic jet. The breeder in the driver’s seat of this genetic jet had better have his goals well thought out and have a system of early-warning signals available to avoid straying off course.” This theme was taken up by Mr James Johnston, a former president of the Aberdeen Angus Society in Britain who, in summing up the. conference, said that in the future the aids that would be available to breeders would carry with them increased risks in the shape of undesirable traits and even abnormalities, which could be unwittingly propagated. Mr Maitland urged that sight should not be lost of stockmanship .in cattle! breeding and that there! should be a 50-50 e tphasis m stockmanship and such lids as performance recording. He said he knew of pig farmers who had gone out 3f business' in only about hree years because they reied wholly on performance ■ecording.