Optimising mature weight for farm efficiency

Join AHDB’s Kim Matthews, Head of Animal Breeding and Tim Byrne, Managing Director, and Tom Kirk, Consultant from AbacusBio International Limited, for a webinar looking at the impact of mature size on farm efficiency and profitability.

There are financial implications to ever increasing mature weights of cows and ewes in the UK. Bigger females generally produce larger calves and lambs; however, larger animals in the breeding herd or flock have a higher maintenance requirement and so eat more. Also, with processors implementing increasingly tight weight limits on slaughtered animals, it is vital to choose the correct breeding female for your system.

The project, funded by AHDB, HCC (Meat Promotion Wales) and Quality Meat Scotland (QMS), sought to determine the implications of differences in breeding female mature weight, based on how changing breeding female mature weight affects other traits in the farm system. The impact on the costs and revenues on a typical farm were assessed and it was found thatwhile there is no perfect mature size for all systems,  there are optimum mature sizes in several different scenarios.

 The webinar will cover;

• How the project was undertaken and the key findings
• Factors to consider in determining optimum mature size for your farm
• Approaches to managing mature size

The webinar will last approximately 35 minutes, with time for questions at the end.

If you can’t make the webinar, please still register, as it will be recorded and sent to you afterwards to watch in your own time.