The Northern Australian Cash Cow Project
NORTH AUSTRALIA - A new $2 million research project plans to bring greater meaning to the term ‘cash cow’ by reducing the estimated $15 million in reproductive losses incurred by cattle producers across northern Australia each year.
14 August 2007
1 minute read
The Northern Australian Beef Fertility Project – also known as ‘Cash Cow’ – aims to:
- Provide producers support tools to help improve reproductive performance
- Identify and quantify the factors behind mob-level reproductive performance
- Involve approximately 96,000 cattle in 154 mobs across 77 commercial properties across northern Australia
- Ultimately the project should provide analytical tools that will support producers in mob-level decisions to improve reproductive performance
The four-year project, funded by MLA and run by the University of Queensland, will also involve 36 private veterinarians who will work with participating producers to collect information over the four years.
Why target reproductive performance? Herd reproductive performance is a key profit driver of northern beef productivity yet the relative importance of the many factors that impact reproductive performance are not well understood. ‘Cash Cow’ aims to provide some answers to change this.
As such, losses of between 5-10 per cent in cows and 15-20 per cent in heifers from pregnancy testing to weaning are the norm across the industry and have been documented in numerous research projects.
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