2008 Sale Date Tuesday 5 August at 11.00am

2008 WEB Angus Open Day Tuesday 15 July, at Eastern Plains.

Open Day Agenda:

9.30 – Morning Tea

10.00 – Jason Strong, “Catapult Genetics” will be speaking on progress with Gene Markers

10.30 – Malcolm Foster, Rangers Valley Feedlot - “Feedlot Industry, Feedlot Trends in Australia, and the impact of Rising Production Costs”

11.00 – Kate Brabin, CAAB Supply and Specifications

11.30 – Rod Polkinghorne,  Retails Trends and Markets

12.00 – BBQ lunch featuring CAAB

Following formalities - inspection of sale bulls at Eastern Plains

Eastern Plains Angus was formed in 1985 as a result of the division of Bald Blair Angus Stud between brothers Richard and Graham White. Richard and family retained and run Bald Blair Angus Stud as it is today. Graham and family then established Eastern Plains Angus. Through succession, management and ownership of Eastern Plains is now conducted by Andrew and Sally, with Graham and Mary still fulfilling an active role in the business.

The Eastern Plains Angus herd comprises 150 HBR and APR cows and 300 commercial cows. From these cows we produce our replacement females, bulls for our on property bull sale held the first Tuesday in August and 140 steers that primarily go to supply feedlots for the long fed B3 export market.

This years' bull sale will be held on Tuesday, 5th August 2008, with inspection prior to the sale.

Our cow herd is run under strict commercial conditions with our aim to produce very productive, fertile cattle that are structurally sound with good calving ease, high growth rates and good meat quality attributes. Females are joined for a 9-week period, while maiden heifers are joined for 6 weeks. Cows & heifers are then pregnancy tested with any drys being culled. Females are also culled if they require assistance at calving or exhibit structural defects.

Our new genetics are sourced through AI and ET technology. In our breeding program & sire selection we are placing a lot of emphasis on traits which are economically important in the commercial market place, namely meat quality traits balanced with growth and fertility traits. The meat quality traits of carcass weight, eye muscle area, rib fat, rump fat, retail beef yield and intra-muscular fat are all assessed when selecting the new genetics that go into our breeding program. The criteria for our sire selection is a good balance of the following traits; average birth weight, above average 600 day growth and fertility, average milk, above average carcass weight, eye muscle area, retail beef yield, and intra-muscular fat (marbling), and average fat.

Each year we AI around 100 HBR and APR females to sires satisfying most of these criteria. We also take our top three or four females to flush and transfer 30 to 40 embryos each year.

At Eastern Plains Angus we continue to use our commercial herd to evaluate our seedstock genetics and their progeny, primarily supplying feeder steers for the long fed export markets. The commercial cowherd is progeny recorded and is used in our own sire evaluation program. Through analyzing the feedlot/feeding efficiency & carcass data of our steers we can identify those cattle/genetics with superior feedlot performance and meat quality traits & select for them.