Journal article
Economic effects of alternate growth path, time of calving and breed type combinations across southern Australian beef cattle environments: Feedlot finishing at the New South Wales experimental site
BL Davies, AR Alford, GR Griffith
Animal Production Science | CSIRO PUBLISHING | Published : 2009
DOI: 10.1071/EA08265
Abstract
The 'Regional Combinations' project and its biophysical outcomes have been described in several other papers in this special edition. The information provided in these papers allows an evaluation of the most profitable beef cattle production systems across different environments in southern Australia. In this paper, the focus is on the New South Wales experimental site where the trial animals were finished in a feedlot. The data identified liveweight gain as the biggest driver of profitability of production. Between growth treatments, there was a large difference in the gross margins before feedlot entry between the 'fast' and 'slow' treatments favouring the fast-grown animals, even after ac..
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Funding Acknowledgements
The financial and in-kind support of the Cooperative Research Centre for Cattle and Beef Quality and its partner agencies Meat and Livestock Australia, New South Wales Department of Primary Industries and the University of New England is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks also to the many staff of these agencies that assisted in field operations, data collection and processing, biometrics and administrative support. The generous support in cash and kind of the commercial cooperator, AgReserves Australia is gratefully acknowledged, as is the individual support of all the field staff and management of this organisation. The cooperation and assistance of Cargill Beef Australia at the finishing and processing stages of the experiments is also acknowledged. The economics team pays a special tribute to the NSW overall project management team of Bill McKiernan, John Wilkins and Jim Walkley who provided support, data and other assistance, whenever asked. Stuart Mounter and Kirrily Pollock provided valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper.