KNOWN as the haute couture of the beef world, the Wagyu breed is undergoing a renaissance in the country as big name Angus breeders join the lucrative times of the premium beef breed.
North East seedstock producers Dom and Joanne Bayard are enjoying this demand for their fullblood genetics after establishing Goorambat Wagyu in 2004.
As an embryo transfer specialist, Mr Bayard was involved with large Wagyu breeding companies in Queensland and Tasmania when the breed was introduced to Australia the 1990’s.
Goorambat was founded with the purchase of 23 females from NSW with their first client order for embryos from China. It has since grown to about 300 breeding females and a number of selected bulls which provide semen for both the domestic and international markets. It also has up to 60 full-blood females at any one time in the flushing team, producing embryos for the export and domestic market.
Following two decades of investment in Australia, the country’s herd is now the biggest outside Japan. The growth has seen a wave of well known Angus breeders move into the production of F1 Wagyu, including Wattle Top Angus, Guyra, NSW.
The demand for fullbloods has resulted in huge growth for Goorambat who use the three prefectural bloodlines of Tajima, Shimane and Tottori.
Mr Bayard said by mixing the prefectural bloodlines, Goorambat was able to produce cattle with marbling traits, frame and milking ability. They run the stud alongside Global Reproduction Solutions, an embryo transfer business that has enabled the marketing and exporting of their genetics across the world. They currently have orders for embryos of fullblood Wagyu from Germany, New Zealand, USA and Canada as well as major demand from South Africa and Europe.
This week, Goorambat begun an embryo export program using the gender selection process of sexed semen, collected from fullblood Wagyu bulls. They are currently filling a contract to supply embryos for a Wagyu breeding herd being established in Europe. He said the advantage of using sexed semen was its high rate of accuracy for selecting the preferred calf sex. In the past, part of the resistance to the breed had been the lack of objective measurement of the carcase attributes. Until recently, evaluating these traits has relied on ultrasound scans of live animals which could not accurately measure the marbling.
New estimated breeding values (EBVs) within the Australian Wagyu herd could change that according to Mr Bayard who said this would lead to greater growth of the breed within Australia. “It has been embraced by Angus breeders who are looking to breed Wagyu and are trying to use these EBVs as a marbling guide,” he said.
The Bayards have participated in the Australian Wagyu Association carcase research, evaluating up to 70 of their own carcases in the past 2.5 years to assess the quality of marbling, eye muscle area and marbling percentage in their cattle.
“It is a great time to be a Wagyu breeder but as with anything that is very heated, there needs to be some caution exhibited,” he said. “It is not a matter of getting in and making a fortune –breeding is very complicated. It is not just one breed, it is a combination of prefectural zones in Japan so in a way you have a number of different breeds coming under the name Wagyu with very different characteristics you need to balance.”
