Our Partners
Long term collaboration with local and international people and businesses is a critical part of who we are and how we remain competitive in a global beef supply chain. Many of these relationships span more than 20 years and some nearly 50 years, and often across generations. To have good partners, you need to be a good partner.
One of our key partners and friends in the business is the Leachman family whom we have been working closely with for nearly 40 years.
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Our two programs have been pursuing very similar selection goals and with the recent increased emphasis on beef quality in New Zealand and with the increasingly global marketplace, our selection goals are essentially the same today. As such, it was an easy decision to combine our genetic predictions into a single analysis. It is no surprise that the animal rankings stayed very much the same as what had been predicted in both separate analyses. While Rissington and Leachman have somewhat distinct environments, the birth weights, weight per day of age through 400 day, and mature cow weights are very similar as are ultrasound comparisons. This exciting development allows our cattle to be truly compared on a global scale. This enables us to see first-hand the latest genetics and developments and keep abreast of market developments. Leachman Cattle of Colorado is based in Fort Collins, Colorado and has co-operator breeders throughout the US, selling over 2,000 bulls annually.
Zoetis is a global animal health company. They discover, develop, manufacture and commercialize medicines, vaccines and diagnostic products, which are complemented by biodevices, genetic tests and precision livestock farming. Zoetis serves veterinarians, livestock producers and people who raise and care for farm and companion animals in more than 100 countries. Zoetis has one of the broadest portfolios of animal genetics products and support services in the industry. Their advanced genetic solutions are tailored to provide accurate genetic predictions that can help livestock producers across species and regions increase the economic returns on their breeding programs.
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We have been a long time customer of Zoetis but now working together with the USA and NZ/Aus based team as part of the Leachman global partners group. As a group we collectively contributed our data of more than 1.2 million animals as the primary data source in the development of the Zoetis Inherit Select product. This enables our NZ customers to generate the same breeding values and $Profit(r) indexes to rank their heifer replacements and cows on future profitability, just as we have done in our seedstock herd – all through a simple DNA test. After more nearly 50 years of performance recording our beef cattle and a 30 year partnership with Leachman, it is a huge milestone to be part of this collaboration, allowing customers to directly benefit in the selection of their females and not just the bull or semen they purchase from us. See Inherit Select to learn more about the information and other benefits.
LIC (Livestock Improvement Corporation) is a farmer cooperative owned by NZ dairy farmers. They are the largest herd improvement company in the NZ dairy industry. We have been working with LIC for over 30 years to package and deliver the very best beef products for the non-replacement part of local dairy farmers business. This has grown substantially in the last decade as the interest from dairy farmers and the wider dairy supply chain in a more planned approach to non-replacement calves and the useful life of these animals. We supply Angus, Profit Maker®, Charolais and Simmental semen that can be accessed directly from your local LIC representative or LIC international.
Southern Pastures has 20 dairy farms in the South Waikato and Canterbury regions of New Zealand with a mission to deliver premium health giving dairy products taking an ethical and consumer lead approach. We met the Southern Pastures team in 2020 and instantly got on well and began the journey of helping them build a system to expand the beef (non-replacement) side of their business. We both had expertise but agreed there were gaps in our knowledge, so we set a measured plan to fill those knowledge gaps while working to achieve their 10 Star Values. That journey continues today.
In 2018, we partnered with Vytelle (formerly GrowSafe) and invested in their technology to capture information on our bulls' individual animal feed intake.
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This is the first in New Zealand and an exciting development for us, our customers, and our partners. With over 70% of production costs being feed we understand the necessity to measure.
ABS are specialists in reproductive technologies.
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We have worked together since the 90’s, refining synchronized AI in beef cows & heifers with great success. Since 2010, we have also been heavily involved in developing our customised bull breeding with them, utilising TVR (trans-vaginal recovery), IVP (in vitro production), and sexed semen technologies to accelerate our genetic gain rapidly. ABS have a very experienced group of staff that are world class at what they do, which is why we have worked closely together for over 20 years.
We have known the owners of Ruminate for more than 25 years and when we established our feedlot nearly 10 years ago to test our bulls we needed needed a partner in the area of animal nutrition and these guys were a great local option. Since then they have become an integral part of the team designing diets but also jointly working how we optimise the wonderful pastoral environment we have in NZ with supplements to support the health, wellbeing and performance of our animals and a number of our farmer partners.
The McKimm and Salter families are the owners of the Big Save Furniture Group who we’ve known for nearly a decade and when they launched their Big Rural division they asked us to help. They are all about short supply chains and delivering unbeatable value to their customers across New Zealand and increasingly that means using natural products in the manufacture of their furniture and bedding. Establishing sheep and beef farms was a way to support this strategy from both a product and understanding of the entire process. We are working with them to help get as many of the products from their farming operation into supply chains with known customers, value creation and capture.