What we are looking for and where we stand today

Registered Angus cattle have EBVs to express the estimated breeding value for 18 different traits that are calculated by the animal’s own recordings, but also its historic parentage and how other animals have performed with similar genetics.

These days we can also DNA profile each animal, which increases the accuracy of these traits.

Our breeding goals

• Calving ease direct and daughters: We want to be “slightly” better than breed average
• Gestation length: We would like to be about breed average, but are not at all breeding for the dairy industry. We hardly look at this number
• Birth weight:  We are looking for breed average or slightly above.  Very low birthweight calves have slower growth, and growth is a driver for us
• 200 day; 400 day; 600 day weights: We want to be in the top 5% for these traits
• Milk and Scrotal size: We only want to be “average” for these traits
• Days to Calving: We want to be above average for this trait, but it does not drive us
• Carcass Weight: We would like to be in the top 5% for this economic trait
• Rib Fat and Rump fat: We would like to be breed average, but most high marbling bulls have negative fat numbers. High fat numbers are not good economic traits
• Retail Beef Yield:  We want to be above average – it is an economic driver.  Positive fats almost always mean low retail beef yield
• IMF (Marbling): our goal is to be in the top 1% for this trait

Indexes

• Angus Pure Index and Self replacing index.  We only look at the Angus Pure Idex and want be definitely be in the top 1% of the breed.  This is the biggest driver for us, along with growth and marbling.

This journey is a journey that will never stop.  Each year animals are born at Lake Farm with superior genetics to our current herd.  But we also have females here with just stunning personalities, and they will live their lives out at Lake Farm.  They are becoming “recipients” to a high-end ET breeding program.

Each year we flush our very top end females, and half our herd will carry embryo transfer progeny.

The “average” of our herd is in the top 1% for Angus Pure Index – the highest average of any herd in New Zealand. But there are many in what we call the “elite 1%”.  We are very proud of this.