Opportunities for Farmers

Commercial farms are an important part of the INZB programme, as they will provide increased linkages throughout the beef industry and contribute to genetic evaluations through the recording of data and incorporation of data into breeding value prediction – which ultimately increases the accuracy with which breeding values, or genetic merit, can be estimated.

Next Generation Herds

Involvement as a Next Generation herd will appeal to farmers with a passion for genetics, who wish to:

• Assess their bull team’s performance.
• Have more accurate information for heifer replacement selection.

Work with their bull breeders to make more rapid genetic progress.

Some key requirements:

• Some direct genetic linkage will be needed. This may require a small amount of Artificial Insemination or working alongside your breeder to achieve this (e.g. natural use of a bull in the commercial herd that is used as AI in the stud herd).
• No weighing of calves at birth will be required but to enable this, accurate foetal age information will be needed. This involves scanning in a narrow window of time by a capable scanner.
• DNA genotyping will be required on the calves of interest to identify the calf to cow.
• Some core trait measuring will be needed e.g
  • Growth weights.
  • Cow Body Condition Score and fertility outcomes (from foetal age data and calf matches).
  • Management mobs.
  • Carcase data (with the potential to collect this direct from meat companies.

If you have any questions about becoming a Next Generation herd, you can email us at INZB@blnzgenetics.com

Opportunities For Breeders

Progeny test sires
The Beef Progeny Test component of the INZB programme has been run at Pāmu’s Kepler farm (Te Anau) since its first mating in 2020.  A second progeny test site located in the North Island at Rimanui Farms' Lochinver Station, (Rangitaiki Plains) was included in 2022.

This programme is fundamental to a multi-breed evaluation by providing both linkage between breeds and New Zealand-collected data to be able to accurately estimate hybrid vigour.  It is open to Angus, Hereford and Simmental breeds.

View Nomination information

Across-breed Beef Progeny Test – List of Sires (Cohort 3, 2022 Mating)
Across-breed Beef Progeny Test – List of Sires (Cohort 2, 2021 Mating)
Across-breed Beef Progeny Test – List of Sires (Cohort 1, 2020 Mating)

Next Generation herds
Interest will be sought for Next Generation herds. Breeders may see this as an opportunity to work closely with a small number of key clients in a breeding alliance. Breeders providing bulls to these herds (under commercial arrangements) would receive feedback on bull performance, including carcase and maternal performance, and enhanced genomic accuracy.

nProve for Beef
Once the evaluation is operational, breeders will be able to record data on B+LNZ Genetics’ nProve database. Breeders will own their data, and B+LNZ Genetics will create and facilitate pipelines to other databases and evaluations, as and where needed.

Participation in New Zealand across-breed evaluation.
As part of this evaluation, breeders will be able to benchmark their bulls across breeds used in the commercial New Zealand industry. Any New Zealand Indexes or new traits developed will provide more NZ-centric information on their animals.

New innovations
Breeders with an interest in specific new traits will be able to collaborate in trait development programmes.

If you’re interested in being involved in the INZB programme, please email info@blnzgenetics.com or phone 0800 745 435