Livestock Targets Stock Draft frequently asked questions

Through increased income from better decisions about drafting of animals for selling and identifying carcass attributes. Minimise selling of animals not ready or suitable for selling in the markets being considered.

Predict price outcomes for alternative meat outlets when targeting a payment grid.

Set future production targets based on important traits and the variation in these traits (e.g. dressing% carcass weight, fat depth, rib eye area and meat quality characteristics, scores etc).

By integrating the biological information with grades and prices to convert to monetary returns. The variation in dressing percentage and fat to weight relationships that affect grade and value are included in generating the weight and fatness of individual carcasses.

There is the potential to significantly add value from aligning livestock to target price grids. Average net returns per animal could quite realistically be increased by several percentage points through setting more appropriate targets and selecting stock using these tools. By allowing for the variation in carcass traits as well as expected means at draft bounds, value is added through better targeting of higher paying grades. This is further increased where payment schedules are based on new traits used in determining carcass value. Plus there are secondary benefits from being able to offer better services or improving your drafting skills and knowing more about your product.

For industry servicing organisations and consultants the software is an important tool in the provision of livestock management guidelines and in implementing more efficient production and selling strategies.

Yes, as the information is all together in one place using user friendly software with the ability to save multiple files to suit your requirements. All the inputs including dressing%s and fat depth information and the details of other traits are all quickly integrated for the drafting criteria you choose. A range of criteria can be assessed quickly, for example, the effect of increasing the lower drafting weight or fat depth.

Comparisons can be made very readily in monetary terms based on grade and carcass weight predictions using different payment systems. Where stock are also sold on liveweight over scales, in the saleyards or on the farm, comparisons can be readily made with these live sale values.

Yes. It is about the various carcass traits which most farmers are well aware of and the relationships between these traits. In using the program the concept of variation is developed, in terms of the spread of data around an average and around a trend line in an X-Y plot. The former is represented in the well known bell shaped curve. These are things farmers deal with when stock are sorted up into weight groups (for example when 3-way drafting). Terms used : standard deviation, residual standard deviation, average or mean, count.

For more information on the normal distribution and paired X-Y plot data including some excellent interactive graphic displays search "normal distribution" and "residual standard deviation" and "regression" on the internet.

Payment systems: Livestock Producers are usually very familiar with payment criteria. If the grading systems files distributed with the software need changing it is a simple task to re-enter the categories and save the updated grade file to disk.

Yes - there are easy to use editing tools and open architecture style inputs and outputs. You can load livestock characterisation files of your own making and meat company price schedules. There is provision for making adjustments in dressing percentages as well as the relationships between weight and other traits (e.g. fat-weight relationships). There is also adaption to US yield grade with weighted average price adjustment for the different quality grades.

There is alot of background information built into the program for important traits - it incorporates leading research findings in the U.S. and New Zealand. Other traits are offered which are termed "User-defined traits" where you calibrate the trait relationships to your own specifications. You can also define your own trait names.

Can I enter actual weigh scale data?

Yes, the software has the ability to predict carcass information from actual animal data and grade these according to the grade criteria specified.

Alternatively you can also generate simulated data to predict grading based on a specified mean and standard deviation for liveweight, and the relationships with various other carcass traits.

The data conforms to some weigh scale indicators. A number of weigh scale packages offer alternative data formats in linker packages. Otherwise weigh data may be imported from a text file prepared in a spreadsheet or text processing program.