Thomas Food International lamb supply chain co-ordinator Dr David Rutley.
Preventable arthritis is compromising growth rate and condition score in the nation’s prime lambs flocks.
Thomas Foods International lamb supply chain co-ordinator Dr David Rutley said incorrect tail docking increased the incidence of arthritis in lambs, resulting in a loss in profit for the producer.
Dr Rutley said that apart from trimming loss, growth was also reduced by arthritis.
TFI has collected disease data on sheep for the past 10 years with a focus on food safety, and is participating in a Meat and Livestock Australia project on reducing endemic conditions in sheep.
Under the $3 million project, 21 sheep health issues will be recorded and communicated to South Australian producers, including grass seeds, pneumonia, arthritis, sheep measles and rib fractures.
When it comes to arthritis, docking lamb’s tails to two knuckles increased the incidence of the disease, Dr Rutley said.
“The skin pulls tighter, it takes longer to heal and there is more chance of infection lodging in the joint causing arthritis,’’ he said.
“The growth of arthritic lambs is reduced as seen in lower hot standard carcase weights and they have less GR fat than normal lambs.’’
Dr Rutley was a guest speaker at the Trigger Vale White Suffolks 2017 information day on August 18 in southern NSW.
He told the 100-strong crowd of commercial producers the disease feedback on sheep and lamb carcasses about to become available on Livestock Data Link was valuable in improving on-farm management systems.
Livestock Data Link facilitates information sharing in the supply chain on carcass compliance and animal health conditions identified by post mortem inspection on downgraded, disease or condemned carcasses.
The Australian lamb industry has a potential cost of non-compliance to market specification of more than $8.4 million a year across two major markets based on research conducted by MLA.
Dr Rutley said the information from Livestock Data Link combined with chiller feedback, DEXA technology for measuring lean meat yield and the Sheep CRC’s big data application, ASKBILL, would become useful tools for sheep producers.
He said TFI took a whole chain approach to ensure customer’s expectations were met.
“Consumers expect consistency and consistency provides opportunity.
“In order to increase consistency, we need to understand the variation in the carcass data, and the biggest cause of the variation is between the individual lambs.
“On genetic trends from 2000 to 2017, dressing percentage, carcass weight, lean meat yield and shear force are all increasing while intramuscular fat is decreasing slowly, along with consumer overall liking.
“We don’t want high yielding lambs with high shear force as eating quality gazumps yields.’’
Trigger Vale stud principal Andrew Bouffler is using genomics to measure shear force and intramuscular fat in White Suffolk progeny.
“Keeping in mind growth is a profit driver for my commercial clients, we haven’t used sires poor in shear force and IMF,’’ Mr Bouffler said.
“There is an inverse relationship between lean meat yield with increased muscle in the carcass, and eating quality but there are animals out there doing both.’’
Mr Bouffler has had 361 White Suffolk rams genomically evaluated, with three rams included in the Information Nucleus Flock.
He estimates 7148 Sheep Genetics evaluations and 50,036 individual measurements have been taken on his flock to measure the genetic progress of eating quality.
Dr Rutley said the customer was the king of the castle in the lamb industry.
“We need to think about the consumer – food safety, portion size and eating quality is important to them,’’ he said.
“The chef wants to know that lamb has been cut evenly, has a low pH and how much connective tissue it contains so he can cook it evenly for the consumer.
“Shelf life, temperature control and oxygen exclusion is important for the wholesaler and butcher so he can supply the chef and consumer.
“All of those issues plus yield are important to the processor.
“For the producer, it is all about fertility, survival, growth and feed conversion.
“But, the producer must also think about what the consumer wants so he can receive a good price for his lambs.’’
Dr Rutley pointed to raising claims (the licence to operate and/or market), animal welfare, grass versus grainfed, and environmental sustainability as important criteria.
