Scott Frankcombe, Sheffield TAS, during the property tour.
Simmental Australia held their 46th Annual General Meeting in Launceston Tasmania on 21st May 2016 with members travelling from Western Australia, South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland to take in the tours of the Tasmanian members prior to the AGM.
Friday saw the travellers inspect cattle at Nathan and Leah Skirving’s East Sassafras property then on to Scott Frankcombe’s cows and calves in the shadow of Mount Roland then on to see the herds of Michael Frankcombe from Sheffield with guest Haylee Bennett from Gawler.
Tasmania had seen some dry times recently with their water supply in the Launceston region nearly dry then 6 inches of rain had fallen in the week prior to our arrival leaving a lovely green tinge to the countryside.
The Federal Board met on the Saturday with the 46th AGM held at the Hotel Grand Chancellor on the Saturday night.
The new executive is President: Peter Wenn (Vic), Treasurer: Stuart Moeck (NSW), Senior Vice President: Garry Gillett (Vic), Junior Vice President: Scott York (Qld). Board members in attendance were from WA – Audrey Weightman, SA – Tom Baker, NSW – John Hopkins, TAS – Aleasha Goss (outgoing) and Michael Frankcombe (incoming).
Outgoing board member Aleasha Goss had spent two years on the board and welcomed Michael Frankcombe back to the board to take Aleasha’s place representing Tasmania.
A special presentation was given to Darryl Barker for his service to the Simmentals in Tasmania. Charles Cowcher from WA introduced Darryl with a few yarns and Darryl continued.
In his President’s report, Peter Wenn commented what a fantastic time it is to be in the beef cattle business, in particular Simmentals. This past year has seen a continuing upward trend for prices of all grades of Simmental cattle in the sale yards and positive stud sale results, including record breaking sales.
It shows that Simmentals are widely used and accepted across the country and an important part of the Australian Beef Industry.
With extraordinary demand from lot feeders and commercial processors, the situation has seen greater requests for live exports through the Associations Export Market Development Program.
Demand for performance figures is increasing, in particular from domestic and overseas markets. The Simmental Breedplan figures were updated recently by the 6.2 version of Breedplan analysis.
This is a large step forward and will ensure that the Simmental breed has the most accurate group Breedplan data.
Some members may have seen some variances to individual EBV’s, but the rankings for individual animals within the breed, have remained largely unchanged.
The ASBA will be working alongside SBTS and ABRI to hold educational seminars/webinars specifically targeted at the Simmental breeders, in the future.