{"id":6670,"date":"2012-12-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-17T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.farmersweekly.co.nz\/research-and-development-for-the-good-of-the-industry\/"},"modified":"2012-12-18T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-17T11:00:00","slug":"research-and-development-for-the-good-of-the-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmersweekly.co.nz\/news\/research-and-development-for-the-good-of-the-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Research and development, for the good of the industry"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

The dairy farmer-owned cooperative has been behind a number of initiatives that changed farming for the good, and this year was no different.<\/p>\n

In 2012, the cooperative continued its investment of about 20% of its revenue, or $25 million, into research and new product development, but for many farmers it will go down as the year of just one sire \u2013 Howies Checkpoint.<\/p>\n

\n

Peter Gatley: Howies Checkpoint was mated to more than a quarter of a million cows over spring.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Genetics general manager Peter Gatley said the KiwiCross sire was mated to more than a quarter of a million cows over spring, creating an estimated 70,000 superior daughters for the national herd.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith a Breeding Worth (BW) of 323, the genes he passes on means each daughter will be $160-plus more profitable than the base cow and that will have a huge impact on the national herd for years to come, as descendants of those matings go on to improve future generations of dairy cows.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other highlights from 2012 include:<\/p>\n

\u2013 agreement from shareholders for the transfer of the 46 fields of the core database, which LIC developed in the 1980s, to industry good body DairyNZ<\/p>\n

\u2013 sexed semen available to more farmers, with near normal conception rates<\/p>\n

\u2013 a line-up of short gestation length bulls, which have the potential to shorten cow gestation lengths by up to nine days<\/p>\n

\u2013 leadership in industry-wide collaboration aimed at improving the reproductive performance of herds across the country.<\/p>\n

MINDA, long the stalwart of dairy herd recording for the majority of Kiwi farmers, evolved into a tool that allows farmers to manage pasture and monitor weight-gain performance of young stock, and among a large portfolio of research work LIC also continued its investment into realising the promise of genomics.<\/p>\n

In a $20 million dollar joint initiative with Fonterra and the Ministry for Primary Industries the DNA of more than 500 dairy animals will be sequenced over seven years to build a catalogue of all the genetic variations that exist in the bovine genome, targeting the traits of most interest to farmers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cutting edge of genomic science is being used in this research, which will improve the selection of animals and have a huge impact on genetic gain of the national herd from 2014,\u201d Peter says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it comes to major evolutions in the New Zealand dairy industry, there has been one constant for the past 100 years, and that\u2019s LIC.\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":6671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t