With the 5% IMF race on in earnest within the breed, Reiland Angus maintains the fundamentals of breeding the “best with the best” - once a strict selection protocol of type, size, soundness, fertility and temperament are met, positive fat EBVs highlight cattle with the benefit or recently recognised easy-doing ability.

There is much conjecture and discussion about EBV’s and we don’t wish to labour this area, but our EBV selection criteria is used to eliminate undesirable genetics more so than continually select the highest performing individuals for selected traits regardless. Reiland has been a member of Breedplan technology since 1981.
Observation would confirm that the overall quality of Australian cattle today is superior in all respects than that of 15-20 years ago. Breedplan has much to do with this improvement and reliability. Human nature will always attempt to embrace extremes, but sometimes we need to resist temptation such as single trait selection.
Reiland Angus has steadfastly developed its own effective criteria for AI sire and back-up sire selection. These include:

Calving heifers at 2 years of age;
Acceptable / low birth / high growth – pushing the 600 day growth EBV to extremes may develop late maturity, especially if associated with elevated mature cow weights. Late maturing cattle are difficult to finish on limited pasture (tough years) and may be, with forecast high grain prices, unattractive to profit-challenged feedlots.
Ever-improving carcase EBVs especially Eye Muscle Area (EMA), breed average and positive Rib & Rump EBVs.
Positive correlation of Retail Beef Yield (RBY%) and Intramuscular Fat (IMF%) – when you review the sires used, Reiland has avoided the extremely high IMF% sires with negative RBY% - they simply don’t carry muscle and inevitably produce “stubby” offspring.
Embrace of low Birth / short gestation genetics over part of the herd for those clients seeking trouble-free, lower stress calvings given the average age of Australian Farmers is 58. Using science to assist in getting the genetics right is part of thekey, with management and conditioning of the calving heifer being a greater variable and can easily impose 80% of the positive or negative outcome with calving two-year old heifers.
Reiland cattle are on average, 0.75-1.0 frame-scores larger than the breed average. We believe this provides an edge for clients selling steers in to popular southern feedlots supplying B3 carcases to Japan.
Reiland actively avoids genetic lines that record negative scrotal EBV’s. Many of the very high marbling sires have negative scrotal measurements.

The Weekly Times, June 25th 2008 “Cargill find new way to pay”

Australia’s fifth largest meat processor is set to change the way it pays producers for their cattle. Cargill now buys 90% of its cattle direct off-farm, and will launch a new red-meat yield payment system using Viascan technology based on the dressing percentage of carcasses. “It will be a system that rewards producers for the right genetics and the right management of those genetics” said Andrew Negline, Cargill’s marketing brands manager. The company wants to work more closely with and reward the producers who are working hard on their genetics and whose animals had the best dressing percentages. Mr Negline said marbling measurements would be a key attribute in the new grading system.

Reiland has maintained a focus of dual selection of RBY% and IMF% given the future importance of carcase yield.

For more information please email Reiland : Mark Lucas