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New calves join farm’s low-carbon cattle herd
This article is written by the Eastern Daily Press and can be found here.
Amid urgent new calls to reduce livestock industry emissions, a Norfolk farm has highlighted the carbon-saving benefits of its feed-efficient cattle. Andrew Spinks runs the Mill Meadow herd of Stabiliser cattle on rented grassland at Oxnead, near Aylsham, with his father Ian. The herd is growing, with an impressive calf born on Sunday being the first of an expected 60 due to arrive in the next 12 weeks.
It coincides with this week's report by conservation charity WWF, which says UK agriculture must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 35pc by 2030 in order to meet climate targets. But while beef cattle are often cited as one of the world's biggest contributors to agricultural emissions, Mr Spinks said his forage and grass-fed cows are part of "one of the best cattle systems for greenhouse gas reductions".
The Stabiliser breed was developed in America in the 1970s, prioritising traits such as feed efficiency, with quick-growing calves and highly-fertile heifers which mature early enough to be calved at two years of age.
"What is really important, and what we want from a cow, is how efficiently it turns grass and forage into beef," said Mr Spinks. "We are not using anything fancy, just forage, and during the summer they are grazing grass. We are able to do that because they are a relatively small cow. If the animal is more efficient it is producing less emissions. It is efficient for carbon, and for our finances, so it is a double win."
According to analysis by the Stabiliser Cattle Company and consultants at Alltech E-CO2, a combination of management and genetic changes can reduce the carbon footprint of a UK beef suckler unit by up to 40pc. These carbon savings can be made with incremental gains from measures such as reducing cow size, calving heifers at two years old and using genetics for improved feed efficiency and faster growth to reduce finishing time, says the report.
Mr Spinks said: "It is like the British Olympic team, looking at all these 1pc wins, adding up to the big saving. As well as focusing on our efficiency traits, we are focusing on health traits, because if an animal is more healthy over its lifecycle it produces more meat."
Because the Mill Meadow herd is fed on homegrown grass and forage, it also avoids the huge carbon cost of imported feed using soya linked with deforestation in South America. The first of this year's calves is likely to be a future breeding bull with "profit index" credentials putting it among the best in the country.
"This calf was born from artificial insemination to a mother who is particularly good, and the father was called Snipe House Ukulele, a really good bull," said Mr Spinks. We use a scoring system which tells us what the likely profit will be. The profit index for the mother was £20,000 and for the father it was £24,000, so the offspring are highly likely to be in that area, which would put it in the top 5-10pc of the breed in the UK."
Regarding the WWF report - and the general environmental arguments against meat production - Mr Spinks said he was confident that systems like his could eventually be seen as part of the solution to reducing agriculture's carbon footprint.
"In a way, I am becoming more confident about this beef system, because it is an integral part of a farming system which is becoming increasingly important in terms of building fertility in the soil. Grazing these big animals on natural grassland has a spin-off in terms of habitat creation and maintaining the landscape and habitats in places like Norfolk and the Broads. We are working with a really scientific, precise and hopefully profitable beef system, but at the same time we are understanding and respecting how we fit in the environment as well.
"In five years' time, beef will be a success story because of that. I think we are creating a system which is future-proof."
Hill C. 2022 New calves join farm's low-carbon cattle herd, Eastern Daily Press, viewed 14th Feb 2022, https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/business/new-calves-join-low-carbon-stabiliser-beef-herd-8683364
