BRAHMAN seedstock producers have been informed that the industry body will suspend publication of all selection indexes later this year, with the breed society to undertake a full review of them.

In a letter to members earlier this week, the Australian Brahman Breeders Association said concerns had been raised by some members that the Live Export Index is no longer relative to the live export industry. (see full email at the bottom of this page).

The live export index is one of two underpinning the Brahman breed, with the Central Production Index to also be suspended on December 1 this year while the association is reviewing it – which will mostly be after this year’s bull sales.

Matthew Noakes, President of the Australian Brahman Breeders Association.

A high weighting on fertility in making up the overall index, and no weighting on the value of the progeny, appears to be the main concerns from members concerned about the current indexes.

ABBA president Matthew Noakes said the indexes were increasingly being used for advertising and it was important to make sure they represented the realities of the marketplace.

“We have had a lot of people communicate to us their concerns and we believe it deserves reviewing either inform people that we can move forward with it or we can fix it,” Mr Noakes said.

“We are not saying they are wrong, we are just saying that enough concerns have been raised that we need to review.”

Why suspend the indexes?

Mr Noakes said the association had decided to put a timeline on the review to make sure the issue progresses.

“I know if we put a timeline on it we have a far better chance of getting an honest reaction and result out of the review than if we just tell people please look into this and two years down the track nothing will have happened,” he said.

“I haven’t seen as big a reaction to an issue coming back to the board from the membership in a long time. But if we get some answers before December, it might not even be suspended.”

Mr Noakes said he understood there are some very different viewpoints on the issue and he was keen to hear them all.

“The best thing and the worst thing about the brahman breed that is we stretch from the Cape York peninsula to northern New South Wales to Western Australia and in there is every different type and production system,” he said.

“The indexes need to reflect the dollar value of what is happening on the ground. If you have cattle that score high in the live export index, they should be returning the buyer more when they enter that market.”

What are the concerns with the indexes?

The main concern with the live export index is that it places a high weighting on fertility traits like ‘days to calving’ and not much on overall growth.

Mr Noakes said the live export market has evolved a lot over the past 15 years as South-East Asian feedlot operations have become more sophisticated and the Indonesian Government had added weight restrictions the cattle.

“We are running a feedlot trial and carcase competition with Austrex in Indonesia at the moment, with the cattle currently on feed. They are prepared to run a trial to try and identify the cattle that are the better performers because they want to know.

“If they can add 150kg rather than 100, surely that animal has to be more favourably accepted.”

Mr Noakes, who is also a cattle buyer for a feedlot, said he would like to see indexes better reflect performance in the market.

“Fertility is a really important profit driver if you are the bloke that owns the cows, if you are the buyer of the steers you don’t care about fertility,” he said.

“There can be a 50pc difference in value between a poor performing animal and a good performer and we believe this isn’t adequately represented in the index.”

Beef Central reached out to a Brahman seedstock group closely aligned with performance recording as a key part of their brand pitch. They said they had not yet discussed the Index suspension internally, and were not yet ready to comment.

Full email

It has been raised as a concern by Members and Industry that The Live Export Index is not currently relative to the Live Export industry.
Especially when the end product is predominantly an animal fed for around 100 days with a target weight of 500-600kg.

The target weight of 300kg with no allowance for future growth, will and does have significant ramifications on the value of these steers entering the market.

The lesser growth of these potentially high indexing cattle and subsequent lesser value in the market leads to the Live Export Index being a poor example of the profit values that it is supposed to reflect.

Some high indexing animals are being shown to be well below breed average or even negative for 400- and 600-day growth.

Due to this fact ABBA have decided to suspend publication of all indexes from Brahman Breedplan effective December 1 st , 2026.

A complete review of indexes will be undertaken, and members will be informed as to their future direction.

Selection indexes assist beef producers to make selection decisions that take into account the relevant growth, carcase, fertility and efficiency attributes of each animal to identify candidates whose progeny will be the most profitable for a particular commercial enterprise.

Selection indexes provide an overall indication of an animal’s genetic value for profit in a specific production system/target market and are calculated based on weightings placed on individual traits that are deemed to be important for that production system.

Live Export Index

• Self-replacing commercial herd targeting the live export markets.
• This selection index is designed for cattle run in extensive northern Australian environments.
• Selected heifers are retained for breeding so maternal traits are important.
• Steers target an export live weight of 300 kg.