What is the advantage of Hybrid Vigour / Crossbreeding

Coota Park Blue-E established our composite line of cattle in 1997

After becoming aware of the value of  composite breeding and also understanding  the value of marbling , we initiated the Blue-E by crossing Shorthorn and Angus together and creating a line of profit driven cattle.

The pig, poultry and lamb industry utilise crossbreeding and composite breeding all the time.

Composite breeding is a planned and directed cross breeding program that harnesses the properties of  hybrid vigour/heterosis . We’re combining the best of the different breeds. Traditionally composite herds included a European breed into their composites, we felt at the time the European breeds may have created some issues in the profitability of our composites and the difference between Shorthorn and Angus in the late 1990s was enough.

We have opened up the Blue-E genetics in 2018 to bring in  new composite genetics predominantly based around Simmental. We have been introducing high performance Simmental and SimX genetics over our Blue-E cows.

Increased profitability comes from using composite bulls and breeding composite cows.

A composite breeding program without performance recording is simply a crossbreeding program.

We are passionate about  Performance Recording (EBV’s or EPD’s).  In 2017 we moved our whole performance recorded herd from Angus Australia’s Multi-Breed register to  Leachman Cattle Company’s system in America, called  $Profit   

The traits we measure are:

  • Fat Depth, Rib and Rump

  • Feed Conversion Ratio

  • Daily feed intake

  • Net Feed Intake

  • Methane Output

  • Gestation length

  • Days to Calving

  • Calving Ease

We have been collecting DNA samples on all our bulls since the late 1990s.

With the evolution of  genomics  , we are now processing all our tested bulls for a full 50K genomics evaluation with Zoetis. Including Homozygous Black and Homozygous Polled testing and full Parent Verification.

The $Profit system reports our genetics with profit driven indexes. These indexes accumulate all the traits into one figure according to how those traits influence profitability of commercial producers.