Heavy Cattle Inefficient

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31087, 16 June 1966, Page 3

Heavy Cattle Inefficient

(N.Z. Press Association)

HAMILTON, June 15. Although it appeared to be in the national interest to increase beef production, it was unlikely to pay the farmer to do so unless much higher outputs of quality beef could be obtained, said Mr A. D. H. Joblin, of the Ruakura Agricultural Research Centre. The winter period when cattle were unproductive was obviously the major source of inefficiency within the industry, he said in a paper to a fanners’ conference on beef production. Because only 11 per cent of grass grew in winter it was important that cattle should not be carried through two winters.

Another argument against carrying young stock through a second winter on fattening farms was the relative inefficiency of the heavy beast as a converter of pasture to meat.

However, calves were not produced without a high “overhead cost” of pasture eaten by their mothers over the previous 12 months, he said. “This overhead cost is spread over the weight of the animal at the time it is slaughtered. Thus it is a major component of the cost per lb of marketing an animal at 3001 b live-weight, but has little effect on the costs of marketing an animal of 15001 b live-weight.

“It Is therefore inefficient in tenns of breeding-cow overheads to market a very light-weight animal,” he said. “But it is inefficient in terms of fattening costs to market a heavy one.”

“Somewhere in the middle there is an optimum slaughter weight, and it is one of the principle long-term objectives in our research programme to find out what thia is.”