Transcript of the lamb marketing masterclass part 3: Know your product
Kate:
Welcome to part three of the Lamb Marketing Masterclass. Tonight's session is "know your product." We'll delve into all the on farm things that influence product meeting market specifications and after tonight we'll have one more remaining session called "know your value chain" where we'll bring everything together. Remember if you've missed any of the previous sessions, please check your email inbox and you can listen in to the recordings of past sessions, and tonight's session will also be recorded as well.
Kate:
I'd like to introduce tonight's presenter, Elke Hocking. Elke brings over 20 years experience in the industry. Elke's got a master's degree in agriculture science and has previously worked for the [inaudible 00:00:53] in New South Wales and [inaudible 00:00:55] solutions in South Australia. Elke currently works as a private livestock consultant in South Australia and is involved in extension and adoption programs for meat and wool producers which I know she's very passionate about. Elke is also very passionate about being able to profitably and sustainably produce high yielding basin lamb that meets consumer expectations, which we'll hear lots about tonight.
Kate:
Another thing Elke does in her spare, spare time is run a prime lamb and beef cattle enterprise along with her family in South Australia. So that's Elke, and I will get her to introduce herself a bit more, but before we do hand over to Elke, I'm just going to open up a poll. Elke's got a few questions that she'd like the participants to answer just to help her get a bit of understanding of who we've got online and so forth. They're around carcase feedback, so let's just open that [inaudible 00:01:56]. Bear with me for a second.
Kate:
So, you should have had pop up on your screen a poll where you could just click some answers to some questions. So, there should be five questions in there. The first question is, "Do you currently receive carcase feedback from your processor?" "Do you calculate the cost of noncompliance or carcases not meeting specification?" Which Elke will talk a bit about tonight. Third question is, "Do you use carcase feedback to make management decisions for improved compliance?" And then we've got a couple of questions around Livestock Data Link. Have you heard of it and have you used it?
Kate:
So I'll just give you a few minutes to answer those questions and we'll get the results. All right, it looks like most people have ... I still see a couple of people clicking. All right, I think most people have [inaudible 00:03:48]. So, [inaudible 00:03:48] this poll and I can share the results and see ... [inaudible 00:03:48] Maybe I think [inaudible 00:03:48] few more seconds to answer those questions so it lets me click it. Here we go. So, hopefully everyone can see on their screen the results to those answers. Do you currently receive feedback? We've got about half of the people there that do online, so that's good to see.
Kate:
Do you calculate the cost of your noncompliance? Do most people don't work out the cost of those carcases not meeting specifications. Do you use carcase feedback to make decisions? We're about half and half there. Have you heard of Livestock Data Link and have you used it? Not many people have heard of it that are online, so that'll be good to talk about that tonight, and nobody's used it, so there we go. We can each do some new things.
Kate:
Without further ado I might hand over to you, Elke.
Elke Hocking:
Okay. Thanks. Can you hear me okay [inaudible 00:04:58]?
Kate:
Yep.
Elke Hocking:
Yep, okay. Then I can change the slide.
Kate:
Yep.
Elke Hocking:
Okay. Thanks for inviting me to present tonight and for the introduction, and thanks, guys, for doing that poll. That just sort of gives me a little bit of an idea on where everyone's sitting. Now I guess I've been involved within the lamb industry for the last 20 years, sort of showing my age, and during this time the product's changed dramatically in both composition and price.
Elke Hocking:
Now, I dug this photo out of an old SA Lamb newsletter from 2002 and I was reading the comments from the chairman. He was saying about how excited he was given the tough season, that during the spring flush, lambs had [inaudible 00:05:43] all the kilogram carcase wage. So that was considered a pretty good price at that then, and as we [inaudible 00:05:48] the graph shows data from 2013 through to current times. Lambs had an amazing run of increasing prices and has developed numerous markets across the world, so it's a pretty exciting place to be.
Elke Hocking:
I just want you to take a moment to picture a scenario for me. It's tea time. Chaos is all around. The kids don't want to turn the TV off. They start arguing about who's going to sit where, which place mat they're going to have, who gets to sit next to dad. There are two things that could happen. Mom could explode. Often happened in our household. Or she could say, "Oh, Dad's cooking a barbecue tonight," and the second scenario normally used to met with instant happiness and calm as that perfectly proportioned lamb chop with its natural handle and delicious aroma appears and there is silence. Mommy's happy and all is right in the world.
Elke Hocking:
That last saving lamb chop to the family household has been a product of a union between the producer and a processor, where each relies on the other doing a good job to keep its place on the family table and restaurants around the world. As farmers, we often take lambs for granted. We used to feed the shanks to our dogs, but at current retail prices, we really have to make sure it maintains premium quality. I guess while I've worked across different sectors of the lamb industry for meat science research through to extension and adoption programs, my main focus has always actually been as a producer and a consumer because I love my lamb.
Elke Hocking:
As Kate mentioned, my farm goal for the last 20 years has been to profitably and sustainably produce high yielding beef and lamb that meets customers' expectations in terms of eating quality, nutrition, welfare and safety. Two best practice production systems, value based trading and a positive, professional approach to business, and I guess I have the luxury of also working as a consultant and working with other like minded producers.
Elke Hocking:
And I still get excited about producing and eating lamb, and feel pretty privileged to be working in the lamb industry as a consultant and as a producer with my husband Peter in the southeast of South Australia. This has a bit of a snapshot of our business. So we've got 1,250 hectares in the southeast of South Australia, probably 50/50 split between [inaudible 00:08:14] cross lambs and cattle trading and finishing during July lambing and May to June carving. Our stocking rate is currently sort of all [inaudible 00:08:24] in the last financial benchmarking year was 15.9 DSE. Now that's come up dramatically from about 12, five or six years ago.
Elke Hocking:
We do benchmark all our farm financials, so our lamb cost of production for the last five years has been sitting around that $4.40. I think it's really important for producers to know their cost of production. Who's our customer? We've been direct marketing to the processor and feed lots for 18 years. I guess I had the luxury of having some inside process and networks, so use both networks and have been marketing direct for a number of years and getting feedback and utilizing that feedback for a long time.
Elke Hocking:
I've been a JBS Farm Assurance client since probably its inception of the farm assurance program, producing 22 kilograms carcase weight, fat score two and three, and grass [inaudible 00:09:20] producer, that heavy export carcase for beef. In 2020 we've made the decision to use an agent one [inaudible 00:09:28] because I'm now [inaudible 00:09:29] five days a week and so I [inaudible 00:09:30] much time as I used to but also because we've really driven those stocking rates higher, and we're going to have a ... probably see a bit more domestic and store lambs come through our system and just all the market instability at the moment. And as Tim sort of mentioned in his first presentation, having a good team around you is really important. So we're sort of changing our direction a bit there.
Elke Hocking:
[inaudible 00:09:57] About knowing your business. I guess I'm a strong believer in having very well defined goals, doing financial benchmarking within my consultancy group, so I do financial benchmarking groups, lifetime [inaudible 00:10:11] and then in the industry head on sort of liquidating quality and [inaudible 00:10:16] yield as well. But I guess we've really sort of seen that the kilograms of meat and wool per hectare versus per head is each one of them our main drivers of profitability in our business and along with stocking rate and fertility or more particularly number of lambs weaned.
Elke Hocking:
Edwina last week talked about knowing your customer and she [inaudible 00:10:43] in the processing sector and developed those really good relationships across that sector. So I guess it's really important to understand, are you producing store lambs to a grass finisher or to another ... to a feed lotter or to the processor? But at the end of the day, whatever you're producing for, you are producing for a customer whether it's the kids down in the bottom ... that's the very old photo too and they have grown significantly since that day, but the kids around the table or the restaurant trade. So knowing your customer, and knowing the trends that are coming, because I guess genetic changes that we make can often take years to come through on their farm.
Elke Hocking:
So tonight we going through understanding come carcase feedback, looking at some traditional grids and then potentially some future grids, some methods to analyze feedback which includes Livestock Data Link, so I will mention that a little bit and I will have to go through some things fairly quickly tonight but I will be providing links at the end of the workshop or when we get the recording. carcase compliance and the cost of noncompliance, and then looking at solutions to noncompliance. So we've got a few options. Live animal assessment, genetics, nutrition and [inaudible 00:12:07] time of [inaudible 00:12:08] and animal health. So there's a fair bit to get through but we'll see how we go.
Elke Hocking:
This is just an example of [inaudible 00:12:17]. I've just some ... I guess some current grids that are out there at the moment that should all be fairly familiar to you. This one's just a non-farm price [inaudible 00:12:29] at the moment. So, 47 kilogram [inaudible 00:12:31] lamb and I guess anything that's ... if a whole load on a truck goes over 65 kilo average then you get less 10 cents per kilo live weight. So that's a little bit different. I haven't sort of seen a live weight one too much before, so that's a new one that's sort of floating around at the moment.
Elke Hocking:
Export contract prices. So this is, I guess, a typical one for forward contracts. Weight range around about 18 to 30 kilos. Fairly broad. That's with two to five, and then [inaudible 00:13:02] some discounts if you go over the 30 kilos, less a dollar, and over that 34 kilos, less a further 50 cents. Okay? So then there's ... this is I guess a fairly familiar grid to hopefully most of you. This is from October 2016, so again, you can put the range ... the top price here is $5 a kilo. So in the blue boxes here, this is where the top price is and you can see, again, it's fairly broad. 18 to 31.9 kilograms and fat scores to five, so very broad at the moment.
Elke Hocking:
Okay, so the current language [inaudible 00:13:47] accurately reflect what the customer actually wants. If we talk to the processor and talking to the processors in my work, what we find is that for, say, an export client, they really would probably ... Sorry. The danger of having another phone in the house. Sorry about that. Yeah, so they would really prefer 24 to 26 kilo carcase weight, but at the moment the price doesn't reflect that. So I guess it's particularly because of [inaudible 00:14:24] at the moment, so they need to put out a business spec so they can guarantee that they'll get the lambs for the market. Lack of also objective carcase measurements for GR fat and [inaudible 00:14:37] yield and eating quality.
Elke Hocking:
So, in terms of fat scoring, so [inaudible 00:14:47] at the moment carcase weight really is our main driver of price. In the plants, mostly it's by [inaudible 00:14:56] has been [inaudible 00:14:56] so similar to live fat scoring is a live animal but on the carcase at the GR site at line speed which can lead to quite low accuracies. It can be done with the GR knife and some processes use that. That's a lot more accurate, but again, when it's done at a really fast chain speed as Edwina was sort of talking about last week, really fast chain speeds and they keep going up, it is very hard to get accurate.
Elke Hocking:
So new technologies are coming in, like DEXA, so the jewel X-ray systems that are coming in with, and this is sort of just showing a picture of the robotics that they're [inaudible 00:15:34] and they go through and take a photo, which X-rays the carcase and they can estimate lean meat yield from that image.
Elke Hocking:
At this point I just want to acknowledge the ALMTech project or the Advanced Livestock Measurement Technologies project, and you can see the list of sponsors there. So they're investing along with industry ... It's really exciting actually because I think the new technologies that are coming out, it's a really collaborative approach between the processors and Meat & Livestock Australia and the universities and the researchers, and it's all sort of ... because it's sort of so collaborative, I think things will progress quite quickly through this process. I just wanted to acknowledge that there because I will be mentioning few things and some of the slides and photos I have got from other sources.
Elke Hocking:
So just looking at a new form of carcase, methods to analyze carcase feedback. So a lot of you sort of said that you haven't really had much to do with Livestock Data Link. You might have heard about it before but really probably haven't used it. So you get to Livestock Data Link through logging in through your myLMA account. You do need to set up an account, but what a lot of producers don't know is there's about five years worth of data sitting there from processors that you may have supplied to.
Elke Hocking:
This is my ... like I said, I've supplied to JBS at Bordertown and if you supply to JBS at Brooklyn or TFI in South Australia then you will have potentially carcase data in there. So you can see here there's carcase summary, carcase analysis. You can benchmark your raw animals across regions and also across seasons. You can look at your percentage compliance to one group or across a number of groups. You can change the grid in there, and I've got an example of that coming up. Look at your compliance or cost of noncompliance. Carcase trends, you can look at them over seasons, and then there's an animal disease and defect summary which I think is quite exciting.
Elke Hocking:
They've been recording a lot of carcase stuff but the producer typically hasn't received a lot of this feedback. So that's something to look out for and start asking your processors about that. It is coming. Okay. So this is actually an example of that animal disease and defect. So you can see that this, from out of 262 animals that were processed, there was 80 incidences of health conditions and this is actually a mutton summary, I think from [inaudible 00:18:32] Island from my property ... father's property over there. So there's some bladder worm and these animals would have gone through TFI at [inaudible 00:18:43]. There's some [pluracene 00:18:44], there's some [inaudible 00:18:45] which was from cats, and some sheep meat also, and then you can go and if you've got no idea what bladder worm is, you can actually go across to hear and click on that little link and that will actually take you to a fact sheet in the MLA's library solutions to feedback library and it will actually give you a fact sheet on all the different things. So it's a really, really interactive sort of feedback.
Elke Hocking:
So just looking at carcase compliance, and this is one of the graphs that, again, Livestock Data Link will look at, and I think just if I ... Yep. So that just shows that out of 5,400 lambs that I analyzed within this particular carcase compliance report, had nearly 92% compliance based on carcase weight and fat, but as I said, the grids are pretty wide. It's pretty easy to hit that. If for instance there's [inaudible 00:19:49] out here, again, you can click on a too heavy link and it will actually take you again to the library of solutions and give you some solutions to address that compliance issue. So again, very, very interactive.
Elke Hocking:
This is, I guess, a more familiar perhaps carcase feedback sheet that you might get from your agent or direct from the processor through your processor and via email or used to be by fax but no longer, so probably via email, and this, again, very easily you can work out where the top price is. So you've got $7.60 down all the way to here and fat score two to five, again, was the range in the grid for the top price and you can see that 564 lambs out of 590 achieved what that top price was. So 96 compliance. It's very easy to [inaudible 00:20:49] like that. A lot of producers I suppose dive straight to this figure down here and yeah, it's pretty exciting at the moment to look at those figures, but it is nice to actually go back and just do a little bit of further analysis rather than just following it in the [inaudible 00:21:03] processed it in your financial package.
Elke Hocking:
The last sort of couple years I've been involved with developing a lamb compliance workshop for Meat & Livestock Australia's profitable graving systems. It's a three day workshop sort of [inaudible 00:21:21] sort of ... it's a supportive learning program so it involves a little bit of one-on-one coaching. We've piloted that workshop through JBS in South Australia and also [inaudible 00:21:32] meat processors. And so what I'm going to give you now is like a really quick snapshot of some of the things that we've got within that workshop. It normally takes three days to do it so as I said, I've got a bit of stuff to get through.
Elke Hocking:
So these are some of the resources and I will provide a link to this one. This is the main one. Improving lamb lean meat yield, so [inaudible 00:21:52] when the sheep CRC [inaudible 00:21:53] there's a lot of really, really good information. If you want more information on lean meat yield and eating quality, that's probably the best resource to go to. Live assessment yard book, this was one that we used to use years and years ago. I had to dig the archives in MLA to find it, so probably needs to get redone again, but that will show all the calculations for dressing percentage and that live assessment. And then the Meat Standards Australia [inaudible 00:22:24] so I will provide them.
Elke Hocking:
So within the workshop, we actually ... we were looking at lean meat yield and eating quality and so we actually wanted to look at a grid ... what a future grid might look like. So normally we've just got the [inaudible 00:22:40] standard carcase weight and fat, and so, again, this is in Livestock Data Link. You can actually make up a grid and analyze all the lambs that you've got in there, so all the lambs that you've produced in the last, say, six years will be in there and you can actually run a grid ... like a futuristic grid over the top of that.
Elke Hocking:
So within this grid ... So zero indicates this is where our top price would be and then when there would be discounts on either side of that. So we've just put in 54 to 58 percentage lean meat yield. So not saying that that's exactly what they want, but that's what they us for the workshop and a range of 18 to 26 kilograms. So you can see it's a lot tighter grid than what we were used to.
Elke Hocking:
So I ran I guess all the carcases that I had in Livestock Data Link from my own business from 2017 to 2020 and [inaudible 00:23:38] and these are probably only the ones that had gone farm assurance. So 2,600 of those as I said, so 93% compliance on the normal [inaudible 00:23:48] which is pretty good. But when we actually look at the lean meat yield percentage, [inaudible 00:23:54] back to 27%. So I think if we were to ... The processes [inaudible 00:24:01] relates to lean meat yield payment tomorrow ... Yeah, probably 80% of producers would actually fail that. Now, the processors know that, so they're not going to do that, so they're going to give people time, and a part of the reason for developing the workshop is to work with the processors, to work with the producers, so that everyone sort of can go on a bit of a journey together to understand what it's going to mean and what things might have to be put in place for the future.
Elke Hocking:
So again, just another analysis that you get within Livestock Data Link. So this is actually calculating the cost of noncompliance for that particular grid that we put in, and you can see that at the end of the day $10.74 per head is our cost of noncompliance. So it's pretty exciting to be able to actually get those figures and then over ... so there's $22,000 or something there over that number of lambs is the cost, so then you can start to see that really ... if we did get paid on something like that, then that gives them impetus to change, that you've suddenly got a financial incentive to do that.
Elke Hocking:
Okay, so pretty much covered market specifications and carcase compliance. I just want to look now to solutions to noncompliance. Okay, we've analyzed our feedback. What can we actually do about that to address perhaps noncompliance issues? They might be genetic or they might be nutrition or [inaudible 00:25:36] or even some animal health issues. So, again, I just want to firstly mention ... So again, this is an ALMTech project. They are looking at some objective measurements in the live animal for measuring body composition or fat or at the GR site.
Elke Hocking:
Now, one of the issues with sheep over beef is that it could be a little bit of a slow process because we do have more on sheep and I think that may be causing a few issues, but they are trialing it, so that's sort of some technology to look out for. But at the moment we've got our trusty scales and measurement at the GR site. Now, I think most people have probably invested in a good set of scales hopefully. If you haven't, hopefully your agent's got a really good set. Doesn't have to be auto draft or anything like that, but that certainly helps with the labor efficiency side of our business to be able to do those [inaudible 00:26:38].
Elke Hocking:
So carcase weight and being able to estimate your dressing percentage is really important. One thing, because of that score, the grid is generally two to five, so we haven't seen discounts for fat score fives for quite some time just on fat score ones, and so we've probably ... I think we've [inaudible 00:27:00] the art of live lamb assessment in fat scoring. Now, it is different condition scoring. There's been lots of people sort of condition scoring. There is a relationship there, but it is better to do fat scoring at the GR site because that is where the measurement's taken at the processor level.
Elke Hocking:
So just a quick reminder, there's five millimeters per fat score, and you can see the range when we're talking about the fat score two to four which is probably the preferred range for processors. We're talking about six to 20 millimeters of fat, so if you can sort of visualize that on your lamb chop then that gives you some idea about what we're actually looking for and what the processor and customer prefers. I guess I just like to also have a bit of a reference so with an open hand into the fingers, that's what a fat score one, so when you're learning to do that, again, just having some verbal cues to help you with that [inaudible 00:28:05] assessment.
Elke Hocking:
I'm hoping most of you are familiar with calculating dressing percentages or you get your agent to do it. The one thing that does continually surprise me is I'll hear comments every year about "Oh, you know, the lambs dress really well this year" and I'll say, "What was the fat score?" The people will say, "Oh, I don't really know." I guess the important thing just to remember is that for every fat score, the dressing percentage goes up by about 2% and then we've got differences with time of speed, so the longer they've been off time off speed before you weigh them, they might dress a little bit heavier and then you've got weaned compared to unweaned. There's about a 2% difference in dressing percentage there as well.
Elke Hocking:
Then we've got the hot standard carcase weight which most processors who do a standard of meat trim which contains bone, fat and meat and then the other thing that I just wanted to touch on was when we've typically talked about dressing percentage in the past, we've talked about yielded. You know, the lambs have yielded really well, and I guess I just wanted to make the distinction between dressing percentage and that versus lean meat yield just so we know what we're talking about. So dressing percentage is calculated from the live ... so their carcase weight divided by the live weight to get a dressing percentage, whereas the lean meat yield is actually the amount of muscle in that carcase.
Elke Hocking:
So really, we've taken away the fat and the bone in that standard carcase and what we're left with, the percentage from that carcase that is muscle is their lean meat yield percentage. So that's just a little bit of terminology for you. Ideally in the future I guess my dream home after working in [inaudible 00:30:00] industry first for 20 years in this space is that one day we will have [inaudible 00:30:03] like I showed you with hot standard carcase weight, lean meat yield and in the long run hopefully eating quality as well. We can measure this. So we weigh this [inaudible 00:30:13] can reliably and accurately measure lean meat yield, but we can't quite do eating quality just yet, so we do need to be able to measure that.
Elke Hocking:
I think Edwina put up this last week that's just really showing that a high yielding carcase has lower fat percentage than a lower yielding carcase, so a big proportion of fat, which is why it's not desirable from the processor [inaudible 00:30:44] and this range is ultimately going to depend on the customer as to what their tolerance for fat is.
Elke Hocking:
So I just want to talk about eating quality. Increasing eating quality is related to increasing intramuscular fat or IMF percentage and it's a reflection of tenderness, juiciness and flavor. So the higher the intramuscular fat, the higher the eating quality in those tenderness, juiciness and flavor characteristics. Currently I guess the Australian industry is sitting around about 4.2% intramuscular fat and greater [inaudible 00:31:26] greater than 5% is premium eating quality. So we're sitting not too bad for eating quality at the moment and ALMTech, as I said, is trialing technology to measure intramuscular fat percentage at chain speed, so that will be a missing link for that.
Elke Hocking:
So why is eating quality of lamb important? As I said, we've got lots of great markets. Your price has been increasing, however we are still very much a niche [inaudible 00:31:57] in the global term, so we've got sheep meat here, beef, and then you can see pork and poultry take the lion's share. So we are in a niche product. We really do need to make sure the quality is maintained of our product.
Elke Hocking:
I guess in the meantime before we get a measure of intramuscular fat at the processing level, and we want to keep that eating quality going forward or at least maintaining. How can we manage eating quality on the farm? Again I'm not going to go into lots of detail about this, but thanks to the work with the sheep CRC and the information nucleus block and subsequent genomic testing, that's pretty much allowed ASBBs to be calculated for those really hard to measure traits. Obviously we can't cut a sheep up and measure its eating quality before we know what it's going to do for the thing, so like a ram or a ewe.
Elke Hocking:
So we've actually got some pretty exciting technologies in genomics that have allowed us to develop rating values. So SF5, that's tier four, so that's a measure of toughness of the meat, intramuscular fat, we've talked about lean meat yield, and then we've got the ones that you've been used to [inaudible 00:33:21] and fat and dressing percentage.
Elke Hocking:
So, one thing to note is that there are some genetic correlations to manage. Unfortunately as intramuscular fat goes down, or sorry, as lean meat yield goes up, intramuscular fat declines. So if we continually selected for high lean meat yield, we would decline our eating quality significantly. So we do need to keep an eye on that and industry ... and I think there was a question last week about what incentives are there. The feed stock industry is pretty much looking at those consumer trends already and wants to make sure that the whole industry has an underpinning good eating quality.
Elke Hocking:
So this just shows that genetics works. Obviously the focus has been on carcase weight. So back in 2000 carcase weight sitting around about that sort of 20 kilos. It's now up around 23.3 kilos in Australia, so we've had about a 3.3 kilograms increase in hot standard carcase weight. Now if we look at the genetic progress, it's the LAMBPLAN and what's happened, this line here is what carcase weight has done and we can see that the ASBVs have actually increased by four kilos as well. So yes, that's pretty ... shows that, yes, genetics works. You can have confidence in the genetics, but this also shows that the overall liking of our product and this blue line is intramuscular fat has been just slowly, slowly declining. So if we're going to keep lamb in a premium place, we need to just make sure we address that.
Elke Hocking:
Now, one of the ways that LAMBPLAN is doing this, you would have perhaps seen when you went to the ram sales this year, carcase plus is no longer and we've got TCP. So terminal carcase production, and all this index does is it basically still drives the profitable traits of carcase weight and high gross and muscle and lean meat but it maintains or slightly improves eating quality. So you don't have to go out and chase it, but using this index across the industry will have that affect. And then if you've got some more specific aims of actually increasing intramuscular fat, then you can actually go to the individual [inaudible 00:36:06].
Elke Hocking:
As I said, I like to have targets and I like to have targets and I like to measure what our current performance is. So, really good idea to measure where you are now. Look at your growth rate for age, your time of turnoff, weaning rates to years joined and then analyze your carcase feedback like I've just demonstrated. The next step is to then set a breeding objective and so this is, I guess, what I would like to achieve over the next couple years, so I've set some facilities, some worms, increasing my carcase weight for the same age, increasing growth rates, and improving or maintaining eating ... sorry, improving or maintaining eating quality.
Elke Hocking:
And then what we've also done ... So this is another piece of technical ... I guess another thing that you may or may not have seen. I actually benchmark my rams in RamSelect. So this was also developed through the sheep CRC. As I purchase the rams, I can enter just the ID in and it will pull across all the ASBVs and continually update them each year from LAMBPLAN and this figure here ...
Elke Hocking:
So the red line shows the industry average, so this one is hard to read, is post weaning weight and you can see that my ram team distribution ... so that's all the rams that I've got on my property ... this is probably a year or so old now, is just slightly above average for post weaning weight and then you can look at where all your other traits fit or you can look at it in the table format. So again, for post weaning weight, our team average is 15.4. So to improve that, I've got to go out and buy rams that are actually better than post weaning weight ASBV of 15.4. So it's just a really handy sort of benchmarking tool for your ram team to see where you're currently sitting.
Elke Hocking:
You can set a breeding objective quite simply. So again, I'll go through this reasonably quickly. You can have a look at that. Preferably then, set yourself some targets. This is a percentile report, so this is the top 20% where this line is. I want to make sure I'm buying rams in the top 20% and you can ... I guess based on that carcase feedback and your breeding objectives, making sure you're using genetics to the fullest potential.
Elke Hocking:
We also need to consider the nutrition of the lambs and measure and monitor. So if you've got those scales, measuring and monitoring your lamb growth is really important. We'd like to think 250 grams per head per day or two kilograms live weight gain per week. If we can sustain that sort of growth rate that lambs will move quickly into a fattening phase at those rates and obviously we need to have about 1,500 kilograms dry matter per hectare on offer ... food on offer, and it really needs to be high energy density. So 10 to 12 megajoules of energy per kilogram of dry matter for lambs to be growing and the table just shows that as the energy in the pasture declines ... So probably from about now onwards, when you see the heads sort of starting to come out on your annual grasses, that growth rate will drop down.
Elke Hocking:
So making sure that you're aware of where you are, so if you're lambing, say, in June here and you might be turning off here, if you're trying to turn off, say, in January the only way you can really do that is to actually have a spot of crop of supplementary feeding system. So this just shows the relationship between digestibility around when it's green and growing throughout the season, the higher the digestibility, the higher the energy value of the pasture.
Elke Hocking:
This is just, I guess, a headline that we keep seeing. 43 kilos carcase weights out there over the last couple years and $345 a head. That's sort of really only $8 a kilo but it really took ... it took a lot of feed, so I think it took about 17 weeks to feed those lambs and I said about 10 kilos, and I think I worked out it would have cost them about $60 worth of grain and not including labor to sort of get those lambs to those heavy carcase weights.
Elke Hocking:
Now, 43 kilos carcase weight, you're going to have a fairly fat lamb which is really not what industry wants. So the process is inefficient to ... Basically the processor has to cut off the fat and they really prefer a 20 to 27% which is equivalent to about a fat score three. So this is probably the ideal around here, so if we've got sort of typically 20, 24 kilo carcase weight there ... We have carcase out here at 43 kilos. It's probably going to have in excess of 37% fat, so that's a lot of fat and it's pretty inefficient. We need to consider the feed efficiency and the cost of putting that fat on.
Elke Hocking:
The lost opportunity, that feed could have been going into your producing the next lot of lambs or gone into your use. As I said, there was, what, 60 kilos of feed. That's a lot of conception rate that you can get in your use or even finishing a second bath of lambs to a lighter weight. So, feed conversion efficiency is the amount of feed required to produce live weight gain. Just checking my time. So the higher the feed conversion efficiency, the lower the feed cost per kilogram of live weight gain, and so ... and there's less energy required to produce muscle than fat, and pretty much above that fat score three or above 27% fat in the carcase, feed conversion goes down. So the growth rates will start to slow as those lambs mature.
Elke Hocking:
As lambs get older, they certainly lay down more fat and become less fee efficient, so really think about the time that you're turning off the lambs. Should you be turning off the lambs a little bit ... at slightly lighter weights, hitting the more preferred supplier of preferred customer requirements and actually having been more profitable in the long run. As I mentioned right at the start, the driver is not per head. It's kilograms per hectare, so think about how many more stock you could potentially run if you have a bit of feed conversion efficiency. So, higher stocking rate, less supplementary feed requirements. So there are quite ... it takes more kilos to put on one kilogram of live weight at a higher fat score.
Elke Hocking:
So what about eating quality and nutrition? We do supply, as many processes require, that we have got MSA registration, and what does that mean? It really means that we're actually guaranteeing that those lambs have been gaining at least 100 to 150 grams per day, two weeks prior to processing, and some of you may have seen [inaudible 00:44:07] the glycogen bucket. We want to basically keep that pretty well topped up. Any sort of stressors, that bucket gets a bit leaky. So the more nutrition with a higher growth rate prior to slaughter will keep that glycogen bucket topped up and more able to sort of maintain pH and have a better eating quality and minimum of fat score, too, is in that.
Elke Hocking:
The other requirements for MSA, as I said, these are all in the teaching tools that I will provide a link for, so [inaudible 00:44:44] other things that we need to consider is total time off feed must not be greater than 48 hours. I know [inaudible 00:44:51] certain times of year they will say, "Oh [inaudible 00:44:54] for a certain number of hours." Just check with your processor, but also keep in mind the MSA requirements for total curfew time.
Elke Hocking:
Just want to touch quickly on animal health. How are we going for time, Kate? Is that okay if I just do a couple more slides?
Kate:
Yep, you're going well, Elke.
Elke Hocking:
Yep, no worries. So from an animal health point of view, the main animal health conditions reported at processing through the National Sheep Health Monitoring Program at a number of processing plants, but ... Yes, and so a lot of stuff gets recorded, but as producers [inaudible 00:45:36] like a major problem, like over 25% incidents of a particular health condition, you may not hear about the odd health condition here or there that could be contributing to loss in carcase weight through trimming. I've just got some examples. So that's some arthritis there. Some pneumonia or pleurisy which often results in cutting out quite a large part of ... perhaps up to one to sort of two or three kilos sometimes of the ribcage. Rib fractures. The issue with rib fractures is that if you're trying to produce ... the customer's trying to get a rack of lamb and you cut a big hole out here. So basically this has been cut out. Suddenly you've damaged your rack of lamb and other things that sort of pop up.
Elke Hocking:
You can't really see this particularly well but that's a muzzle on your dog. I have seen instances where a dog has bitten every hind leg of a lamb in a [inaudible 00:46:39] processes. We'll definitely tell you about that one. So these are just I guess a list of some of the conditions. Grass seeds could be more of an issue, perhaps particularly around New South Wales this year. Probably hasn't been with the drought the last few years so that one could raise its head again this year, I would say.
Elke Hocking:
The main point, just to [inaudible 00:47:05] withholding periods and start asking the processor for animal health feedback. As I said, tier five through the enhance [inaudible 00:47:11] surveillance program has been providing animal health feedback in Livestock Data Link. Gundagai Meat Processors has just started doing it. I think if you process lambs through Brooklyn at JBS there will be animal health feedback in Livestock Data Link. Not quite at Bordertown yet but is coming shortly, and a number of rather processing plants are starting to look at providing producers with animal health feedback.
Elke Hocking:
So just another couple of points on best practice, I suppose. So vaccinations for cheesy glands and arthritis, making sure that the vaccination sites are away from the valuable areas of the carcase, so high on the neck, and for arthritis, we've actually been vaccinating the youth prior to lambing, because a lot of the infection actually comes through the umbilical cord, so vaccinating pre-lambing is probably more important than doing it at lamb marking.
Elke Hocking:
Having said that, making sure that you've got good lamb marking hygiene. This is just something our contractor rigged up, so the lambs land on a rubber mat. This can be hosed down at the end of each day and so they're not falling in the dirt [inaudible 00:48:36] open wounds after lamb marking. They're grazing on grass seed free pastures. Other things I've sort of said. Yeah, muzzle dogs. One that perhaps we used to talk about a little bit is pulling ... So this is a real no-no. If you look up the lambs by the wool, it will actually cause bruising under the skin. So this is the right way to handle a lamb. That's the wrong way to handle a lamb. So definitely don't pull on the wool because it does cause some bruising underneath.
Elke Hocking:
Another one that has probably come up a little bit more is adequate [inaudible 00:49:10] ... I keep seeing examples of lambs with tails taken right back to the base. It really must be the third joint or to the tip of the vulva. From a ewe point of view, skin cancers and also they should be able to lift their tail to defecate and there has been some links to increased arthritis with shorter tail lengths, possibly as a site of infection as well.
Elke Hocking:
Minimizing dust, so dusty conditions can lead to pneumonia and pleurisy and then with things like [inaudible 00:49:51] managing your wounds in dogs and your foxes and then from a growth point, achieving lamb growth rates, obviously you want to be controlling the wounds in your sheep as well.
Elke Hocking:
Okay, so pretty much I want you to really think about what your plan of action will be. So, first thing, request carcase feedback at all times, whether it's from having a good relationship with the processor or the agent, and what needs to change to actually increase your profit? Actually analyze your carcase feedback rather than just filing it in a drawer, and start ... As I said, some of you may already be doing a lot of the weighing your lambs or your agent may be weighing your lambs. In the future if we are going more towards lean meat yield, fat score is our only real live assessment and it is very highly related to lean meat yield, so that's our best assessment at the moment going forward. So perhaps reacquaint yourself with the fat scoring system.
Elke Hocking:
Genetics, as I said, I went over that fairly fast but set a good breeding objective and have a look ... And don't have skills in that area, really go and get some skills. Genetics, it's been shown time and time again, it does work. You can have confidence in the system that they do work. It's just a matter of picking what suits your breeding objective and choosing accordingly. If interested, you can benchmark your ram team through RamSelect. Again, I'll provide links for some information on that. Really think about your turn-off of your age of lambs. Are you actually marking them at the right age? Or carcase weight for age? Can you be more efficient about it?
Elke Hocking:
Monitor your feedback quality and quantity. You know, what are you good at? I think one of the things that I looked at after analyzing five years worth of data recently is typically we only get 22 kilos, fat score two and three. We do struggle to finish lamb sometimes, so really, with increasing our stocking rate, we will be producing more store lambs in the future. So that's something that I've got from just analyzing that feedback over the years.
Elke Hocking:
Livestock husbandry and animal health, and then yeah, as I said, monitor your progress. Have really good records. I can't emphasize that enough. I tell all my lifetime new clients to, yeah, really just keep good records. And there's systems around like AgriWebb that make that so much more simple now, and I really would encourage you to do some financial [inaudible 00:52:42] marking even if it's just analyzing your cost of production there.
Elke Hocking:
So yeah, so that's pretty much it for me. Sorry, I said there's probably a spare bit of information in there. Probably haven't got heaps of time for questions, but I'm certainly happy to follow up later on if there are questions that we don't get time for.
Kate:
Thanks, Elke. You've certainly provided us with a lot of information in a short amount of time, and I know Elke mentioned a whole lot of links and fantastic tools, so we will send them out when we send out the recording of tonight's webinar. I do have a couple of questions here, Elke. We've got a couple of minutes. First of all, just a few little clarification questions. You mentioned chain speed, which is [inaudible 00:53:35] if you can just give sort of insight into what that actually means, measuring things at chain speed?
Elke Hocking:
Yep. So just I guess how fast the chain is traveling, so how many carcases are going past a particular point in a minute sort of thing. So it's increased ... I haven't got the numbers off the top of my head. I think Edwina mentioned them last week but it's certainly ... it's increased dramatically, so they go really, really fast. So the time taken to be able to do a measurement is very minimal in a lamb chain compared to, say, beef where the carcases travel quite slowly.
Kate:
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I think I've heard figures saying 15 ... a minute going past, so [crosstalk 00:54:36]-
Elke Hocking:
... Per minute I think is ... I reckon what we're up to, yes, in some processes [crosstalk 00:54:36] ...
Kate:
Yep.
Elke Hocking:
Yep.
Kate:
And a couple of questions around LDL, and I might just group these together. First of all, what work is being done in either ALMTech or other projects to bring more processes onboard to use LDL, particularly with carcase feedback? And the second part of that is if I don't have a greeting LDL but I've got carcase feedback direct from a processor, can I still use solutions to feedback?
Elke Hocking:
Yeah. I guess a couple of answers to that ... I guess Livestock Data Link when it was originally [inaudible 00:55:06], the hope was that all processors would take it onboard. What's actually happened is that some processors are going to be developing their own systems, so I know ... So [inaudible 00:55:16] for example in beef, they've got their own system that's sort of equivalent to Livestock Data Link but it's their own system. If you don't produce, or if you've got all I guess your current carcase feedback, it's probably just a matter of manually going through like I sort of showed on one of those previous slides to actually look at your compliance over time as that it's ... You could potentially ... if you ask the processor, they could potentially provide an eating Excel which you might be able to analyze a little bit easier, but yeah, it's pretty much just the old fashioned way going through looking at your compliance and calculating out the cost of noncompliance manually like I showed in that sort of setting example that wasn't Livestock Data Link.
Elke Hocking:
But certainly you can still ... the solutions to comply ... sorry, the solutions to compliance on the Meat & Livestock Australia website, yes, anyone can go to that and click on a link to say ... you say you can clink on a link, "carcase is too heavy" and it will take you to say, "Okay, look at your genetics" or "Look at your nutrition." So I have got a link for the solutions to carcase compliance that anyone can use.
Kate:
Great [crosstalk 00:56:44] we'll send that out with the links as we go through. You mentioned, Elke, fat scoring and getting back into fat scoring and that we might be a bit out of practice for that. Question around condition score versus fat score and is there a relationship and can we use that when we're marketing as an alternative or not?
Elke Hocking:
Yeah. There is a relationship because obviously it's all fat but it is at a different site though. There is a ... it's about, I don't know, .23. I did see it the other day and I should have written it down because I haven't got it in front of me, so I don't want to tell you the wrong thing, but there is a relationship definitely. It's an indicator but if we're actually moving to lean meat yield or getting paid on a GR because for some smaller processes that may not be able to afford, say, a [inaudible 00:57:40] machine, they may actually just go to a more accurate method of measuring GR as an indicator and then payment systems based on carcase weight and fat again. So it's best to still measure at the GR site to get that accurate measurement. But yeah, condition score will be an indicator but it's best to do the fat scoring at the right spot.
Kate:
Thanks, Elke. And we've got one last question here. Last week we talked about the [inaudible 00:58:09] skins and what the processors are looking for, but what can we do on farm to achieve what they're looking for? Do you have any comments on that?
Elke Hocking:
I don't know. I'm not too [inaudible 00:58:23] at the moment because I think our last [inaudible 00:58:25] of skins because I remember I think early on it was like $16. So it's really just talking to the processor. Sometimes they will have different requirements. Good preparation is normally, say, a [inaudible 00:58:43] crutch so it's more for skin, sort of from a hygiene perspective. If you've got I guess dusty skins or long wooled skins, you get roll back onto the carcase and that can cause contamination and lead to extra trimming. So that's probably more of an issue.
Elke Hocking:
In terms of the actual skin buyer, I wouldn't hazard a guess as to what they're really looking for. Talk to the processor about what they're ... at the current time, what their requirements are for skin length and it will probably be more around that carcase hygiene and skin rollback as opposed to the actual in customer at this point in time.
Kate:
All right, thanks Elke, and that brings us to 8:30. I've just opened up a poll for people to complete just on how you found tonight. So if I can get people to complete that, but yeah, I think, Elke, you've covered a whole lot of ground tonight in a short amount of space and like we said, we'll send out some follow-up information for you to ... that links to all the things that Elke spoke about tonight, but thank you very much, Elke, and [crosstalk 01:00:10] ...
Elke Hocking:
Yep. Yep, sorry, no, it was my pleasure to present, so yeah, and certainly all the links, they are quite comprehensive, so there is quite a bit of detail and videos if you want more information. Thank you.
Kate:
Thank you, and I will just mention next week is our final part four webinar for the Lamb Marketing Masterclass so we're bringing everything together next week. We've got Tom Bull who's going to be presenting with Kirstie Anderson and I really liked your last slide, Elke, about selecting data and using on farm data because they'll be covering off on a whole lot of that information, so yeah, tune in next week and we will round up the end of Lamb Marketing Masterclass. So, thanks very much everyone and we'll let you all go and enjoy your evening. I'll just leave that poll open for a few more minutes, but yeah, thank you.