Software helps select profitable breeding stock

A dairy sector animal-profitability measuring tool has been adapted for the beef sector by Livestock Improvement.

Trace Solutions Beef is software similar to MINDA, used by most dairy farmers to track the productivity and profitability of animals.

Farmers input information on stock - such as birth dates and weights - and the software calculates, for example, which animals are putting on weight quicker.

Trace Solutions sales manager Doug Lineham said that within a few years, beef farmers would be required to track animals from pasture to plate.

"We've developed a tool which enables them to do that and, at the same time, provides them with an unheralded level of insight into their animals."

Poor-performing animals would no longer be able to "hide" within a mob, giving farmers better information on which stock to breed from and which to send for slaughter.

Lineham said electronic ID, which can accompany Trace Solutions Beef, would in effect become an animal's "registration plate".

The Government had signalled that compulsory animal identification for the beef industry would be introduced soon.

So both beef and dairy farmers needed to start thinking now about how they would meet any legislative requirements.

- STAFF REPORTER