This week we're back chatting about Angus cattle with another great livestock producer with a passion for genetics.

Born and raised on the family farm, Lucinda always knew she was going to be involved in the agricultural industry.  After growing up on a merino sheep property,  she gained a first class honours degree in Agricultural Science, followed by a formative time in the goat industry.  Since the mid-1980s, she has been farming with husband Bryan, at one point with multiple livestock breeding enterprises, now specialising in breeding Angus cattle.

We start off by talking about Landcare, something close to Lucinda's heart.

"When Landcare started in the late 80s, that was a lot of fun, just thinking and learning about how to do things differently and working more in tune with the environment.  That has had a number of iterations and now it's very focused on climate change and how we work with what is a changing environment to run our businesses with a degree of resilience and profitability. It's all about leaving a better environmental legacy in the farming business."

Mark and Lucinda then dive into the main focus of the podcast, breeding good Angus cattle, something Lucinda has a lot of experience with the Rennylea Angus herd.

Rennylea Angus is based in the Murray Valley in Southern NSW.  The Angus cattle were introduced in 1952 alongside merino sheep.  Today there are 2,300 recorded cows in the herd, and a total of 4,500 cattle on various properties.

"We are very much a tier 1 performance herd."  We came through the 80s when we were just measuring weights.  BREEDPLAN started in 1985 and we were a foundation herd at that time.  Then we went on and became involved in the Beef CRC project."

Lucinda gives Mark a run down of where the Rennylea Angus herd is heading towards.

"We aim for a well-under breed average for birth weight, a calf that grows quickly to 400 days.  We're interested in elite carcass performance - cows that have positive genetic fat, but not too much."

"We're very interested in the maturity pattern, how you select for performance but don't end up with a really big maternal flock in terms of the individual animal."

Diving into the maternal efficiency trait, Mark asks about bending the curve of maternal efficiency, so that mature cow weight doesn't increase with 400 day weight - a topic they are both passionate about.

We round the podcast off with talk of the future.  From securing succession at home, the future of branding beef to consumers in Australia, to innovation in seed stock.  As Lucinda says, "The future isn't what it used to be and we know it will change.  It's up to us how we play in that changing space."

Rennylea:
https://www.rennylea.com.au/

You can find out more about Landcare Australia here: https://landcareaustralia.org.au/

Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited. We help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best: [email protected].

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