Effects of milking cows once daily throughout lactation at high stocking rates (17% more cows/ha than for those milked twice daily) were studied in 2 Friesian and 2 Jersey herds during 3 lactations. Cows were allocated to 2 herds within breed and were milked either once or twice daily, based on age, genetic merit, and previous performance. Cows remained in their original herd and were milked at the same milking frequency during all lactations. Culled cows (20% per year) were replaced by 2-yr-old heifers. Yields of milk, lactose, protein, and fat were measured every 2 wk by commercial herd test. Cubic splines (5 knots) were used to approximate the lactation curve for each cow-yr to provide estimates of performance for each day of lactation. Yields of milk were greater for Friesian and Jersey cows milked twice daily (4,751 +/- 89 and 3,067 +/- 81 kg/cow) than for cows milked once daily (3,329 +/- 80 and 2,431 +/- 75 kg/cow), respectively. Cows milked once daily had lesser total and peak yields of milk, lactose, protein, and fat than cows milked twice daily. Friesians had greater total and peak yields than Jerseys. Peak production for all milk components occurred earlier in lactation for cows milked once daily than twice daily (d 24 to 39 vs. 32 to 44). Three measures of persistency of lactation were considered for each cow with 2 measures (Pers1 and Pers2) indicating that cows milked twice daily had better persistency than those milked once daily. Ranking of herds in persistency tended to match the ranking based on total yields. Measures of persistency (Pers1 and Pers2) were positively related to total yield in the Jerseys milked once daily and negatively related to peak yield in the Friesians. The third persistency measure (Pers3) ranked once-daily Jerseys first and twice-daily Friesians last, and was negatively correlated with total yield in the Friesian herds and negatively correlated with peak yield in all herds. For most performance measures, cows milked twice daily had better total yields and persistency than cows milked once daily.

Farm animal welfare assessment protocols use different measures depending on production systems and the purpose of the assessment. There is no standardized validated animal welfare protocol for the assessment of beef cattle farms in New Zealand, despite the importance of beef exports to the country. The aim of this study was therefore to identify welfare measures that would be suitable for an animal welfare assessment protocol for use in extensive pasture-based cow–calf beef cattle systems in New Zealand. The proposed animal welfare assessment measures were selected from the Welfare Quality protocol and the rangeland-based UC Davis Cow–Calf Health and Handling assessment protocol. Measures that were deemed impractical and/or unsuitable were excluded from the protocol. After testing the applicability of selected measures at one farm, additional measures that were deemed to be practical to undertake in New Zealand were identified and incorporated into the protocol. The intention was to identify animal welfare indicators that were assessable in the yard during a single farm visit, a questionnaire guided interview, and a farm resource assessment visit that evaluated cattle health and management. Further testing of the 50 measures that were identified as being appropriate will be undertaken on commercial beef farms to develop a practicable welfare protocol for extensive pasture-based beef systems.

Potential measures suitable for assessing welfare in pasture-based beef cow–calf systems in New Zealand were identified from Welfare Quality and UC Davis Cow-Calf protocols. These were trialled on a single farm and a potential protocol of 50 measures created. The aim of this study was to assess the feasibility of the measures included in this protocol on multiple farms in order, to develop a credible animal welfare assessment protocol for pasture-based cow–calf farms systems in New Zealand. The assessment protocol was trialled on 25 farms over two visits and took a total of 2.5 h over both visits for a 100-cow herd. The first visit in autumn included an animal welfare assessment of 3366 cows during pregnancy scanning, while the second visit in winter included a questionnaire-guided interview to assess cattle management and health, and a farm resource evaluation. Through a process of eliminating unsuitable measures, adjustments of modifiable measures and retaining feasible measures, a protocol with 32 measures was created. The application of the protocol on the farms showed that not all measures are feasible for on-farm assessment, and categorisation of identified animal welfare measures into scores that indicate a threshold of acceptable and non-acceptable welfare standards is necessary.

Currently, comparisons of lamb output from either ewe lambs or mature ewes are confounded, as the age groups are bred to different sires, and lamb at different times. The aim of this experiment was to compare the reproductive performance of ewe lambs and mature ewes, bred at the same time to the same sires, and lambed in the same climatic conditions. The experiment included 1082 mature ewes and 1014 ewe lambs that gave birth to 2656 lambs. Birth weights of lambs were 3.92 ± 0.06 kg and 5.02 ± 0.06 kg, and weaning weights of lambs were 24.03 ± 0.24 kg and 26.68 ± 0.29 kg for ewe lambs and mature ewes, respectively. Lambs born to ewe lambs were less vigorous than lambs born to mature ewes, even when adjusted for their lighter birth weights. Lamb survival during the neonatal period was 92.2% and 97.3% for lambs born to ewe lambs or mature ewes, respectively. The effect of birth weight on survival within each dam age and lamb birth rank followed a quadratic form, and differed for each group. Farmers should preferentially allocate all ewe lambs and mature ewes bearing triplets to lamb in paddocks that provide better conditions for lambing.

Research has shown that enhancing finishing performance in beef cows is feasible; however, any adverse impact of selection strategies for finishing performance on the performance of the maternal herd should be taken into account. The aim of this research was to examine the inheritance of growth, ultrasound and carcass traits in finishing beef cattle and to evaluate their correlations with maternal performance traits. Data were collected from a nationwide progeny test on commercial New Zealand hill country farms comprising a total of 4473 beef cows and their progeny. Most finishing traits were moderately to highly heritable (0.28–0.58) with the exception of meat or fat colour and ossification (0.00–0.12). Ultrasound scan traits had high genetic correlations with corresponding traits measured at slaughter (r_g = 0.53–0.95) and may be used as a selection tool for improved genetic merit of the beef carcass. Fat content determined via ultrasound scanning in the live animal or at slaughter in finishing cattle is positively genetically correlated with rebreeding performance (r_g = 0.22–0.39) in female herd replacements and negatively correlated with mature cow live weight (r_g = −0.40 to −0.19). Low-magnitude associations were observed between the genetic merit for carcass fat traits with body condition in mature cows.

Little is known about the growth performance of beef sires used over dairy cows in New Zealand. This experiment aimed to evaluate the growth of Angus and Hereford sires via progeny testing of beef-cross-dairy offspring born to dairy cows and grown on hill country pasture. Live weights at 131, 200, 400, 600 and 800 days were analysed from a dataset of 5208 records from 1101 progeny of 73 sires. The means of the progeny group means for live weight were 118.6 kg at 131 days, 159.1 kg at 200 days, 284.2 kg at 400 days, 427.0 kg at 600 days and 503.6 kg at 800 days, and the overall daily growth rate was 0.58 kg/day from 131 to 800 days. The sire affected (p < 0.05) the live weight of their progeny at all ages. Differences in live weights between the lightest and heaviest progeny group means increased from 19 kg at 131 days to 90 kg at 800 days. Even though growth of calves was likely restricted to 200 days, live weight at 200 days explained 51–56% of the variation in live weights at 400 and 600 days (p < 0.05). Thus, the use of beef sires selected for growth has the potential to increase the live weight of cattle born on dairy farms for meat production.