Bill Cornell of ABS Australia was the first speaker for the evening.
The inaugural Angus Australia Spring Bull Night took place in Albury Wodonga on August 28, 2018, livestreaming presentations from five genetics specialist organisations with their latest release A.I sires.
The participating organisations ABS, Semex Beef, Rennylea Angus, Genetics Australia and Agri-Gene were given the opportunity to present a selection of the currently available Angus A.I bulls, highlighting their strengths and statistics, how they might be used in an A.I program and how their progeny are performing.
The event, streamed via YouTube, gave the opportunity for producers to view the bull catalogues of these organisations to assist in the decision-making process for potential sires for their Spring A.I joining’s.
As the beef industry is one spread over vast distances all over Australia, the event gave the opportunity for producers and breeders from various areas to participate in the presentations where typically, circumstances wouldn’t allow.
Whilst the event did suffer some technological difficulties, it was quite successful for the introduction of an event of this nature to the Angus Australia calendar and an excellent starting point for events like this to come.
Bill Cornell of ABS Australia was the first speaker for the evening and expressed that having new communication technologies available such as streaming events like the Spring Bull Night is of mutual benefit for genetics companies and the producers.
“I thought it was a great event. Any events that we have like this to be able to communicate to beef producers about the products we have for them to make more informed decisions is a great thing to have,” Mr Cornell said.
“At ABS we do love running these programs so anything like this where people get an opportunity to learn more about the animals, and also perhaps after the night think ‘which bulls did I like’ or ‘which direction should I head my program in’, anything to test them out in that regard I think is a good thing.”
Lucinda Corrigan from Rennylea Angus, who presented at the event with her daughter Ruth said the event gave them the benefit of the opportunity to showcase their bull catalogue which focused on bulls suitable for the commercial industry.
“My view is people are much more time poor than they used to be,” Mrs Corrigan said. “We are certainly finding this within our business with our client group and with our friends and colleagues, so I think anything we can do online in terms of training, or information innovations I think is a really useful thing for end users.”
Rob Onley representing Agri-Gene, said that the event gave the opportunity for representatives like himself to reach producers that distance usually wouldn’t allow.
“The night that Angus Australia put o was extremely enjoyable to be a part of, we got a lot out of it and we hope the farmers got something out of it too,” he said. “We look forward to doing more in the future because tonight was really worthwhile
“We live in a really big country and for us to get to all the farms is really difficult and equally for the breeders to get to us”.
“What was offered at the event was the ability to go through some of those extra details that people don’t get to see on a day to day basis just before their joining, so I think from a distance standpoint it covered off a lot of bases for a lot of Angus breeders”.
Nigel Semmens of Genetics Australia commended the event and said the convenience of events like the Spring Bull Night allows for a greater connect to regional or remote areas, where some producers may suffer at the hands a distance.
“This gave a lot of people the opportunity to listen to what we’ve got to say,” he said. “We can’t get to all regions or remote areas, so it gives people from those locations the chance to log in and catch up with all the latest news of all the bulls available.”