The highs and lows of the agricultural show

EBLEX had a major stand at the Dairy Event and Livestock Show held at the NEC this week. Visitors were plentiful, and judging by the footfall to the stand and discussions I had, most of the visitors seemed to be finding what they wanted. It was very encouraging to speak to so many well-informed farmers in such a short space of time.

My particular mission was to talk about the value of Estimated Breeding Values (EBVs) as a tool for selecting breeding stock. This was a job I had ‘inherited’ from my colleague Sam Boon because he was engaged elsewhere. It’s the kind of talk I have given quite often so I had no worries about the content, although I would acknowledge Sam has a deeper knowledge of genetics and breeding than me.

The gist of the presentation is that beef cattle and sheep are the product of the genes they carry and the management applied to them. When you are selecting a bull or ram to produce your slaughter generation, the niceties of exactly how he looks are less important than the genes he carries and passes on to his progeny. This is particularly true for traits that are not expressed when you are looking at the sire. It is impossible to look at a bull or ram and decide what potential his daughters are going to have as mothers.

This is where EBVs come in, telling you about the likely performance of offspring by measuring performance in the sire, his parents and grandparents, his siblings and half-siblings, as well as any other progeny already produced. You can also gather up all the economically weighted EBVs into an index to identify the most financially rewarding sires overall. There’s loads of good quality info on this sort of thing on the EBLEX Better Returns Programme web pages (as well as individual breed society websites), and there will be even more on the new Signet website, which is coming soon.

As you can tell, I was quite enthused about the prospect of giving my talk in the showing rings once on each of the two days. I decided to go to the ring nice and early, as it was some way from the EBLEX stand, and found the ring was occupied by a fine array of rare breed pigs and then sheep. There was a good crowd of 150-plus watching the judging. That finished and like a spilt drink on the beach, the crowd drained away in a trice. When the time came for my presentation I had an audience of …five.

This was a little disheartening, but I decided to plough on in the hope that there would be some passing trade that would stop and listen. My lively, entertaining and informative talk drove two of the five away. I like to think they already had a good understanding of EBVs so did not need to stay. So I finished and then had a chat with the remaining three audience members before retiring to the safety of the EBLEX stand.

I don’t know if Sam would have done any better, but it is quite clear that a middle white sow with big ears, dish face and a snub nose held considerably more charms for that audience than me and my EBVs.