Some of the nation's best full-blood Wagyu genetics are expected to attract Australia wide, and even international interest, when Mayura Station at Millicent holds its first production sale later this month.
Last year the South East stud set an Australian all breeds female record when one of its heifers made $280,000 at the Elite Wagyu National sale, to a United States buyer.
Mayura Station also holds the record sale price for a full-blood Wagyu bull when Hewitt Pastoral, Qld, purchased Mayura L0010 for $105,000 in the Elite Wagyu sale in 2017.
Mayura Station managing director Scott de Bruin says strong demand for their genetics at industry sales has given him the confidence to hold the genetic sale on March 26.
Ten bulls, 14 unjoined heifers and six semen packages will be on offer.
"Our focus has been purely on meat and being able to grow, produce and market the best quality beef we possibly could," he said.
"As a consequence of producing high quality beef you need great quality cattle- we think we have a high quality genetic base here."
Mayura's foray into Wagyu began in 1995 when it joined pure bred bulls to its Angus and Murray Grey females to produce F1 cattle.
Three years later the de Bruins imported 25 full-blood Wagyu females from Japan, via America and 22 years on the herd has grown to more than 3000 full-blood breeding females.
We are tracking every animal from the day that it is born all the way through to slaughter.
- Scott de Bruin
Since establishing a boutique beef brand in early 2000 it has built strong markets in Asia and Australia and won many awards, including the 2019 Australian Wagyu Association grand champion Wagyu brand.
In 2018 its on-farm restaurant, The Tasting Room, won the nation's top steakhouse in the Restaurant and Caterers Awards.
Mr de Bruin says their vertically integrated business, which includes a feedlot, has given them a unique opportunity to record a plethora of performance data.
This genetic evaluation, along with the recent genomic work, has positioned them at the elite end of the fastest growing breed in Australia.
'We are tracking every animal from the day that it is born all the way through to slaughter, we have a lot of information on weaning weights, on carcase information, all the things that are really important to keep moving forward," he said.
"If you can't measure it you can't improve it."
Over the past five years the hot standard carcase weight of Mayura's cattle has lifted by 7 per cent, the eye muscle area is up by 7.4 pc, and they have increased their average marble score by 17pc.
At the same time they have decreased the age at slaughter of their cattle by 24pc and dropped the average days on feed by 20pc.
Mr de Bruin says a focus on producing early maturing cattle has seen their cattle slaughtered at 24 to 26 months, about six months younger than most Wagyu.
He is excited by the quality of the offering with the bulls ranked in the top 1pc for at least one carcase trait on Breedplan, and the unjoined heifers in the top 5pc for the same traits.
" The majority of cattle were bred by embryo transfer so the plan was in motion three years ago to produce these elite genetics," he said.
"We have selected the best quality dams and joined them to the best quality bulls and the estimated breeding values for these cattle are very, very high and phenotypically they look terrific too."
Kicking off the sale will be three packages of two straws each in Itoshigenami Junior - the first release since 10 straws sold for $30,500 in 2016.
Junior is the number one bull in the breed for carcase traits, including marbling, with a self replacing index of $327.
The sale will be conducted by Qld-based agent Grant Daniel Long and interfaced with Elite Livestock Auctions.
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