It was almost 12 months ago when the AngusNZ Board decided to survey its members and get their feedback on how we could serve our membership better.
A really key and resounding message from that survey was people wanting more information. Both old and new members wanted an easier way to access the huge number of different things that help us in our quest to breed that perfect cattle beast. And before I go any further, we owe a huge thank you to our members who took the time to contribute – it would be a challenge to grow anything without this. From the feedback, an idea was born.
After much research and many discussions around social media and how people best like to receive information, we decided to start videoing everything we do on farm and in the office. Our first attempt was to film an embryo transplant programme as it happened – the what, the why and most importantly the how much money!
Now, in my normal life I am usually the annoying guy asking a million questions, so it was so much fun for me to be able to do that with free rein. It was a really great day and it got everyone excited about how far we can take this project.
In early February we teamed up with Gallagher to see how their technology can help us on farm to save time, labour – and again that all-important money.
As I write this, we have plans to video calf tagging and weighing at birth, the ins and outs of DNA and SNP testing, how to collect and record data easily and accurately, how to then send that information to registry in a way that is both simple for us to send and for them to receive.
I can also see this spreading throughout breeders, talking to old and new on different challenges they’ve faced and how they have overcome them and how they hope to leave their stamp on the beef industry.
As an offshoot of all of these things we hope to create healthy, respectful and varied discussions and build a culture of sharing and growing together. First and foremost, it’s about education – for the learner and teacher.
We have so many more ideas on where this new path might take us, and we would love to hear from anyone who is willing to share their thoughts on what we could look at next. We have amazing people within this industry with so much knowledge that we can readily tap into, so I’m really looking forward to getting that out and sharing with everyone so together we can be world leaders in the beef industry.