Foundation
We have taken a fairly conservative approach to establishing the business and being careful not to throw a lot of money around with marketing or spending big on individual animals. The foundation herd was 27 heifers from the Team Te Mania program. Those were commercial (ACR) females with more than 3 generations of recorded pedigree and breedplan data. The best of their female progeny were upgraded to the Angus Performance Register (APR).
Additional females have been purchased from dispersal sales. So far these have included Aberdeen Estate, Old Kentucky, Welcome Swallow and Strathewan.
The Females
We only retain the best 50% of the heifer calves – generally the ones sired by the best Australian and American genetics via our AI program.
Our goals are to run an ‘A Team’ and a ‘B Team’ of cows. The A Team will be in the AI program and will produce the sale bulls and retained heifers. The B Team (of lesser cows) will produce heifers for export and steers. The B Team will help to increase our performance recording base for Breedplan data.
The breeding program
We are artificially inseminating 40-50 cows a year in a fixed time program. If cows don’t take to the AI, they get one more chance with a back-up bull. Any female that calved less than 50 days prior to the program is excluded and joined naturally (straight after calving) to bring her pregnancy forward as much as possible. This allows us to maintain a strict 6 week joining.
We typically use between 3 and 6 different sires in the AI program. Every mating is carefully considered at the Breedplan level to ensure the progeny has as balanced EBV’s as possible. Where a cow’s EBV’s are already nicely balanced, 400Day growth is number one priority. We also keep a keen eye on maintaining frame size at around 6.
Breedplan
Breedplan is a fundamental tool at Black Star Angus. As a cattle breeder, when we look at any given animal, it is important to remember that the animal in front of us is only one expression of a multitude of possible expressions of those genes. Breedplan gives far greater insight to the common expression of those genes by giving us information on not just the animal in front of us but also that animal’s relatives.
In 2016, the Black Star Angus breeding females (excluding cows used as ET recipients) average:
- +4.3 for birthweight (below breed average)
- +86.9 for 400 day growth (top 15% percentile of Angus breed)
- +95.4 for Mature Cow Weight
- positive rib and rump fat
- well above breed average for carcass traits
- +117.3 for the Angus breeding herd index (top 20% percentile of the Angus Breed)..