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\u2022 A score of 2 or 8 are low scoring animals and should be\u00a0carefully evaluating before using in a breeding program<\/p>\n
\u2022 A score of 1 or 9 are considered culls<\/p>\n
While this does provide good objective assessments, there is often a request from producers for more information regarding the whole animals, including front end, head and eyes, testicles and muscling.\u00a0\u00a0And with that amount of information, it\u2019s often been asked if it was possible just to get a single score for each animal.<\/p>\n
Over the past 7 years I\u2019ve been working with a man who has been grappling with these questions, particularly in assessing sheep and goats.\u00a0\u00a0Angus Burnett Smith has been working on ClassiMate for around 10 years and has taken it to a point where it is now offering some great opportunities for producers to objectively assess their livestock.<\/p>\n
In the case of Beef cattle, Angus approach me to form a small team to suggest how cattle could be assessed on their physical traits in a way that offered producers a simple summary of the traits and an overall rating on each animal.\u00a0\u00a0Working with well-known industry leaders, Jeff House, Brian Cumming and Alison Hamilton, we initially suggested BCAS as a starting point, with the inclusion of the standard BREEDPLAN assessments for docility and incorporating muscle scores into the observation.<\/p>\n
It certainly hasn\u2019t been a small undertaking.\u00a0\u00a0However, in recent weeks I\u2019ve been able to take this pilot concept into commercial reality to assess a group of sale bulls for a breeder in the NSW New England.<\/p>\n
Angus has developed a simple app that can be used in the yards on a mobile phone to assess the physical traits of each animal.\u00a0\u00a0This not only scores the animal on a scale of 1 \u2013 100 so that there is a quick visual reference for a producer.\u00a0\u00a0It also evaluates the data collected to provide a score out of 10.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n