Rebecca Hickson is equally at home on farm, in front of a lectern, or in the lab. Over the past 20 years she has forged a reputation as one of New Zealand’s keenest minds on animal genetics and beef finishing and was instrumental in the development of the Beef+Lamb NZ Genetics Beef Progeny Test that involves around 1,300 dairy cows each year. The former Massey University Professor recently joined the Co-op as Dairy Beef Development Manager.
I joined the Co-op on 30th April this year. It’s a big change for me. I’m a beef scientist by trade. Before joining the Co-op I worked at Focus Genetics (a subsidiary of Pāmu) and prior to that was a Professor of Cattle Breeding and Production at Massey University. I’ve done a lot of research on dairy beef over the years, mostly from a genetics angle.
Back in 2015 I was the technical science lead for the dairy beef progeny test looking at how we can improve dairy beef through good genetics. Recognising that about 50% of the prime cattle finished in New Zealand were born in a dairy herd, a big part of our opportunity sits in these calves.
Until recently I ran Focus Genetics’ cattle breeding programmes, where one of the things that I did was create a dedicated dairy beef terminal sire breed. This was part of the Pāmu strategy of rearing all non-replacement calves by 2030.
In my limited spare time my husband and I rear a bunch of calves every year. I’ve always found that it’s been really good for my science to keep my feet firmly in my gumboots, but also I think it’s been good for my calf rearing operation as well, because I’m up to date with what the latest ideas are. This year, we’re rearing about 350 calves, so it’s not huge, but it’s enough given the many other things I have going on.
I’ve seen the opportunities that exist in dairy beef and I’m really excited about my role at the Co-op and being able to help the industry capitalise on some of these opportunities.
We can use artificial insemination in dairy cows much easier than we can into beef. There are opportunities to have outstanding genetics come out of these dairy beef calves. This currently isn’t really happening, but easily could be. We have a bottleneck at the moment with calf rearing but there is potential to make these calves a really profitable option. If we were to finish more calves, we obviously need to rear more of them. I’m looking at opportunities to make the rearing piece work better. Great genetics and feeding can also mean we can finish cattle in 18 months instead of two to two and a half years, leading to reduced maintenance feed requirements and improved efficiency.
I’ve spent a long time working on dairy beef from a beef industry perspective, and now I’m really enjoying learning about the sector from a dairy perspective. This is a great opportunity to develop solutions that can work for dairy and beef.