The Rural Voice, 1985-09, Page 28weights targeted in the industry to-
day, a farmer could raise them more
economically.
Cash crops, especially grains, will
affect the future cattle beast as well.
Depending on whether grain prices
rise or fall, cattle will be grass-fed or
grain -fed. Just as the change in the
poultry business from floor -raised
chickens to caged ones required
research, genetics will be involved in
adapting cattle to the most
economical feeding methods.
The Al beef animal may not be the
dominant figure in the future of beef,
Shaver suggests. He would like to see
more market research done to deter-
mine if Al should remain king. For
example, all the grocery stores in the
Windsor area could offer consumers
both today's superior product and a
Tess costly "inferior" beef product.
Consumers could make the choice.
The experiment would run six mon-
ths. Beef researchers could use the
resulting data to determine if con-
sumers generally give higher priorities
to price than to quality. Unfortunate-
ly, Shaver doesn't believe there is an
existing beef organization strong
enough to implement such a study.
If research of this type shows con-
sumers prefer to buy B2 beef, meat
coatings or sweet and sour sauces
could be designed for beef to help
give the meat flavour (as they are
designed for chicken today). Beef
producers could start raising cattle to
meet this consumer demand.
Shaver believes that consumers
would accept a small drop in the
quality of beef if they could buy beef
more cheaply.
The Beefplan animals, however,
will produce beef with good flavour
because of the Maine -Anjou in-
fluence creating a marbled meat pro-
duct, Shaver adds.
In another area of the economics of
beef production, Shaver suggests that
further research could create more
twinning in calves. Shaver's
hypothetical "synthetic" twins could
meet producers' demands by having
no horns. Shaver's Beefplan breed is
approximately 60 per cent polled to-
day, but he in fact believes that the
desire for hornless cattle is only a fad.
It takes only a few minutes to dehorn
an animal, and Shaver says he would
rather have a good horned animal
than a poorer polled one.
Developing a new cattle breed is
much more difficult than developing
a new poultry breed because of the
time involved. Shaver has seen the
turnover of 100 generations of
chickens, and in that same period on-
ly 12 generations of cattle. "It's a bit
discouraging the time it takes with
beef," he says.
Shaver uses modern embryo
transplants. There will be 20 to 30 ar-
tificial breedings on his farm in the
Milverton area in the near future.
This doesn't speed up generations as
much as it allows Shaver to utilize the
best of his own herd in his quest to at-
tain a genetically sound new breed.
"Genetics is disciplined, expensive,
and time consuming." You try a
multitude of things, Shaver says,
noting that an incredible number of
tests have been done in the broiler
and layer industries. "There are more
failures than successes," he adds, but
he still believes firmly in the process.
He is dissatisified about the com-
paratively small amount of money the
beef industry allocates to research of
this kind. "A miniscule amount of
money is spent on research and
development."
Many non-agricultural companies,
Shaver says, spend five per cent of
gross sales on research. When there
are $50 million in gross sales in a seg-
ment of the beef industry, $2.5
million should rightfully be targeted
to research and development to main-
tain a competitive food product, he
says.
Beef is the meat of preference
among consumers, he says, but cat-
tlemen can't expect this to save them
if they don't adjust to change. "In
many beef organizations, there is a
tremendous amount of jealousy
which hinders progress. It's difficult
for producers to get beyond that
jealousy to see who is raising the best
animals. In the dairy industry, Hols-
tein producers have passed that. They
want to know who has the best sire �o
more producers can use it to improve
their industry." Shaver suggests that
if 20 to 30 herds united in research,
there would be a data base of more
than 15,000 cattle, which would allow
credible testing.
The Shavers are striving to make
their own herd a more credible size (at
least a 200 -cow herd of Shaver
Beefplan) in order to get more
reliable research. To multiply their
base, Shaver decided to sell his
Maine -Anjou herd last year. "The
sale was one of the top Maine -Anjou
sales in Canada in 1984." People
from seven states and three provinces
bid for the cattle. "It was a tough
moment seeing those cattle go. But I
know what I'm aiming for. I must
devote my time to the synthetic," he
says. Cattle from the Lincoln Red
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