So far 10 genetic-focused farmers are part of the seven-year $16.7 million Informing New Zealand Beef programme funded by Beef + Lamb New Zealand, the Government and Meat Board.
The goal is to lift profitability and sustainability across the beef industry by developing and adopting improved genetics.
By the final year there will be 50 farmers providing pedigree records, assessing bull performances and gathering data for selecting heifer replacements as well as working with bull breeders to make more rapid genetic progress.
In the second recruitment there were surplus commercial farmers keen to get on board.
B+LNZ Genetics general manager Dan Brier said there were already another 10 commercial farmers lined up for the next intake, with more to come.
"We’ve had to turn people away, so farmers are really interested to be part of it.
"The whole crux of the project is we learn things that farmers can implement on their own farm.
"So these commercial farmers are helping us to do the learning, both of the genetics, but also how people can do this on their own farm so all farmers can get value out of it."
The aim of the programme was to lift the beef industry where genetic-gain uptake had been slower than other livestock industries, he said.
"The over-arching goal is to increase the rate of genetic gain in our commercial herds and help farmers to use superior genetics and help them make their farms more profitable and sustainable, and there’s three or four ways we’re going to do that."
One direction would be to look at New Zealand-based indexes using breeding objectives important to the farming system and develop new traits for farmers.
So far farmers were keen to see new fertility traits and body-condition score traits developed for their cows.
Other ideas for traits were expected to emerge over the programme.
Mr Brier said they were figuring out how to develop new traits, including health traits for parasite resistance and perhaps facial eczema.
He said the fertility performance of beef farms varied, with some farmers achieving empty rates in single figures and doing an excellent job in getting their cows pregnant.
"Then there’s other farms with a higher empty rate than that. I would be guessing that the reproduction efficiency — the replacement of our national herd — is probably like 80%.
"For every 100 cows mated we have 80 calves. That’s a combination of how many cows get in-calf and how many are reared effectively."
He said there was room for improvement.
The programme planned to bring together data from stud breeders and commercial farmers.
"Genetics is a game of numbers and the more numbers the better. The dairy industry has essentially every farmer in the country doing herd testing who is supplying information into their genetic evaluations. So we are trying to copy that a little bit by getting our commercial farmers to provide us information so we can build this into evaluations to give stud farmers more information for their selections."
Some farmers had a good relationship with their stud breeder and an understanding of what genetics could do for their farm business and others less so, he said.
The programme had beef progeny test sites at Lochinver Station in central North Island and Kepler Farm (Pamu) near Te Anau.
Cross-bred evaluations were being carried out at these farms to help farmers compare breed performance.
At Kepler the cross-breeding of hereford and angus cows to bulls of the same breed was being analysed to assess how much hybrid vigour there was between them and to compare the breeding value results. Their cross-bred daughters would also be mated back to the sire breeds to compare results between the breeds and the cross-breds.
Commercial farmers involved in the programme would be able to benchmark their herds against others participating, as well as helping to make the beef industry stronger.
As well as following a recording schedule over the year they could also carry out genotyping of their cow herd, calves and sires.
Mr Brier said the commercial farmers were vital to the programme.
He said they had close to the same attention to detail of stud breeders, were good at collecting information on individual animals and followed their performance closely.
"This commercial farmer piece is really important so it’s great we have these farmers joining and then more joining as well. We’re helping farmers to collect good information on farms, showing and figuring out how to collect this information really well.
"That’s really important for giving a return on investment for the industry."
They also had a close genetic link to a stud and that would help the programme goal of getting information free-flowing to studs to help breeders make genetic decisions, Mr Brier said.
