Windhoek Workshop

ABRI Extension Services on the ground in South Africa and Namibia

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In October, Catriona Millen from ABRI’s Extension Services team headed to Southern Africa to present at several industry events. The first of these was the Livestock Registering Federation (LRF) Stockman School, which each year attracts several hundred producers from across Southern Africa. In 2022, the theme was Building a profitable cow herd. Catriona gave several presentations, outlining how BREEDPLAN EBVs and Selection Indexes can be utilised to select for maternal cows and profitable steers. Catriona also provided a snapshot of the beef genetics research that is currently underway, and what producers may see in future BREEDPLAN analyses. Catriona then travelled to Namibia, where she gave several similar presentations at the Namibian Brahman Breeders Society (NBBS) Symposium and National Sale.

While overseas, Catriona also took the opportunity to provide BREEDPLAN workshops for ABRI’s Namibian and South African breed society clients. These were held at Bloemfontein, South Africa and Windhoek, Namibia, and gave breed society staff the opportunity to further their knowledge of BREEDPLAN and discuss any questions that they had.

The trip provided a great opportunity to liaise in-person with ABRI’s Southern African clients and learn more about the opportunities and challenges of the Southern African beef industry,” Catriona says. “I particularly enjoyed attending the LRF Stockman School Awards night, where a number of BREEDPLAN members were recognised for their contributions to beef breeding.”

Catriona would like to thank the LRF, NBBS and Namibian Stud Breeders Association (NSBA) and their staff for the invitation to present at these events and the support provided while she was in Africa.

If you have any questions please contact contact our team.

ILR

International Livestock Register (ILR) Update

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The ‘ILR’ Support team have been busy supporting existing and new clients in their use and development of our ILR system resulting in an ILR client base expansion with new clients in the US, Mexico, and Spain.

We are continuing to migrate participating client’s ILR databases from their on-premise servers to our Azure cloud servers and are availing them to the cloud’s many benefits in the process. One of these benefits for our clients, is the ability to offer our latest ‘ILROnline’ web system to their members where the cloud is a prerequisite.

We continue to schedule ILROnline implementations and are constantly improving and evolving the system as we go. We successfully implemented ‘full functionality’ ILROnline systems for some of our clients in Australia and the US that include both ‘Member Services’, via login, and the ‘Public Services’ search functionality. This will pave the way for us to commence the process of assisting these clients to retire their use of the ‘Internet Solutions’ web system.

ABRI is committed to improving the service that it provides to our ILR clients we encourage you to contact us to discuss any aspects of your ILR systems marcus.osullivan@abri.une.edu.au or support@abri.une.edu.au.

South Devon Cattle

United Kingdom South Devon Release New Selection Indexes

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Two newly revised selection indexes for the South Devon Herd Book Society (United Kingdom) have been released in conjunction with the February 2023 South Devon BREEDPLAN analysis. These are the:

  • Quality Beef Index
  • Suckler Replacement Index

The two revised selection indexes will replace the previous UK South Devon selection indexes and were developed by the South Devon Herd Book Society in conjunction with staff from BREEDPLAN at the Agricultural Business Research Institute (ABRI) in Australia.

Further information about the newly revised selection indexes for UK South Devon is available from the Help Centre on the BREEDPLAN website here.

Mark Christian

ABRI Welcomes Mark Christian, Chief Product & Innovation Officer

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The team at the Agricultural Business Research Institute (ABRI)
would like to extend a warm welcome to Mark Christian,
who has joined us as the Chief Product & Innovation Officer.

Mark Christian relocated to Armidale from the United Kingdom in 2023 to undertake the exciting new role of Chief Product and Innovation Officer for ABRI. Mark has led large product transformation projects on three continents in various industries and led several AR/VR tech ventures in the UK. During the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Mark founded a start-up business supporting the UK National Health Service (NHS) to fill large gaps in the training of healthcare students. Mark was the founder and Global Director of Immersive Learning at Pearson Education and led the spin out of this organisation to a venture-backed start-up in 2019. Prior to living in the UK Mark founded a technology-focused agency in Canberra and worked in the University sector in both New Zealand and Australia. A native of the US, Mark has a bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary as well as several patents in his name. Mark is most excited to be working for ABRI, where he will be overseeing the ABRI products, ensuring they are fit for purpose, innovative, meeting the customer needs and creating value to ABRI and our clients.

To connect with Mark please see below.

Email: mchristian@abri.une.edu.au

And the winner is

ABRI’s new App AndTheWinnerIs

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This exciting new App has been developed by the team at the Agricultural Business Research Institute (ABRI) following consultations with clients and their members.

AndTheWinnerIs collates results and statistics in real-time from iCompete competition management software and displays it in a mobile friendly layout.

This app works seamlessly with the iCompete program enabling members to view live scoring, and all event results as the data is entered into iCompete.

The App is fully functional for Campdraft events, with new enhancements currently underway for Rodeo and Cutting events.

This new App will provide all member associations with an invaluable tool that can be included as a membership ‘value add’ for existing members and to attract new members.

This new App is available for free download for Android or Apple on the App Store.

Jump online download the free App today

And The Winner Is … on the App Store (apple.com)

iCompete is an online system that is used by Associations to manage memberships, animal registrations, entries, events, shows results, payment details and more. As it’s customised to each client, it can cater for any specific policies, rules and restrictions that an association has in place.

Herefords Australia are utilising the iCompete functionality for their upcoming event in March 2023 Dubbo National Poll Hereford Show and Sale – Herefords Australia

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/and-the-winner-is/id1645034606
FF screenshot

UNE Farming Futures Events

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Late last month, ABRI were proud silver sponsors of the UNE Farming Futures events in Armidale. On Thursday, 21 July, ABRI held a booth at the Careers Fair, which presented plenty of opportunities to connect with students who have an interest in establishing a career in the livestock industries.

Later that evening, we had four representatives from ABRI attend the Industry Dinner, which provided a chance to catch up with our industry colleagues.

  

3 cows

BREEDPLAN Completeness of Performance Report

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The Completeness of Performance herd rating system assesses the quantity of pedigree and performance information that has been submitted to BREEDPLAN by an individual seedstock herd.

The Completeness of Performance star rating provides both seedstock and commercial producers with an assessment of how much performance has been submitted to BREEDPLAN by a herd. The star rating is an average of annual herd ratings over a five-year period. This five-year period is updated every year after the July BREEDPLAN evaluation.

The Completeness of Performance herd report is designed to help breeders identify any gaps in data submission that they might not be aware of, and so enable them to fill in those gaps as much as possible. We recommend that your members are encouraged to check their Completeness of Performance reports at regular intervals.

Recently, the report has also been updated to include abattoir carcase traits. This will be useful for those breeds collecting abattoir carcase data.

The Completeness of Performance score rating system, detailed at the back of the Breed Summary report, enables breed associations to score individual traits in such a way as to promote those traits important to the breed, or encourage breeders to collect data they consider to be important now or in the future. With the recent inclusion of abattoir carcase traits it will now be possible to include carcase traits in your Completeness of Performance score ratings to encourage submission of carcase data if this is important to your breed.

If you have any questions about Completeness of Performance herd reports or star ratings contact our team.

dylan-gillis-KdeqA3aTnBY-unsplash

An Update from the ILR Support Team

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Supporting a comprehensive system like ILR2, that is so many different things to so many different breed societies, is a logistical challenge of balancing our all-important client priorities with our own.

This winter has presented additional challenges with a new Covid spike and other winter lurgies that have affected our staffing capacity as well as that of rest of the country.

Despite the challenges, the ILR Support team is a hive of activity as we aggressively strive to support and evolve the ILR systems of our existing clients and implement new systems for the increasing number of new clients.    

We have recently resurrected the ILR systems for two of our previous clients who had left for greener pastures but have now chosen to return. This speaks into the depth of ABRI’s experience in service provision and the benefits of having access to a large and experienced software support team.

In addition to the 170 odd breed society clients we support around the world, we are currently in the process of rolling out new ILR2 systems to 3 new clients in the USA and another in South Africa.

Having successfully rolled out ILROnline ‘member services’ to many of our clients, we are now in a position to begin scheduling the ILROnline ‘public services’ rollout.

Whereas ILROnline ‘member services’ allow members to enquire, add and maintain their own data in real time via secure login, ILROnline ‘public services’ allows the general public to perform real time member and animal related enquires across the society’s database.

The implementation of ILROnline ‘public services’ will mark the beginning of the consultation process that we will undertake with our clients to replace their ‘Internet Solutions’ web systems.

Other busyness involves the migration of participating clients from their on-premise ILR servers to our Azure cloud servers. This being a prerequisite for the implementation of ILROnline among the many other benefits of the cloud.

We are currently focusing our ILROnline ‘member services’ rollout in the United Kingdom with 2 clients in the final stages of system implementation and we have just begun the process for our largest UK client.    

ILR2’s DNA Module is continually being refined and is continuing to evolve as we roll it out to more and more clients and seek to meet their requirements.

We are actively looking at ways to improve our ability to respond to client requests as quickly and efficiently as possible and we look forward making significant inroads in this area over the coming months.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss any aspects of your ILR systems please don’t hesitate to contact our team.

Phone

Let’s Talk Competition Software

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ABRI’s competition software, iCompete, is a full association system from A to Z. Not only can it handle your membership, registrations, renewals, association’s breeding certificates and DNA results, but it can also allow your association to have a total solution to offer affiliates or committees to run their events and programs at no additional cost.

Originally designed for the Equine industry, iCompete now also caters for Cattle, Sheep, Goats and Dog associations that are after an event and competition system.

Modules in iCompete are:

  • Members
  • Animals
  • Event management
  • Result entry
  • Standing calculations
  • Award calculations
  • Studbook search
  • Online calendar
  • Live results
  • Affiliate/Committee screensSee example below of our online calendar module.

Everything from campdrafts, rodeos and show ring events are covered in the events system that comes standard with iCompete. Along with the events module comes a member module that allows members to manage their own information taking away the need to contact your association to make these changes, this allows your association to get on with the functions that will help it grow and expand.

If you run events and want a complete solution, please contact us. 

DX cows

ABRI Welcomes New Dairy Express Manager

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The team at the Agricultural Business Research Institute (ABRI)
would like to extend a warm welcome to Fiona Brierley,
who has joined us as the Manager of Dairy Express.

Dairy Express is a leading supplier of herd management
information services to the Australian dairy industry and is managed
under the suite of products and services provided by ABRI.  

ABRI is excited to have on-board Fiona’s extensive knowledge
and on-field experience of the dairy industry as she takes on
this new challenge. She has held a range of consultancy, farm planning
and facilitator roles throughout her career, even starting out as a dairy
herd recorder. In these roles, she has provided services for many farming
families and businesses including consultancy and farm planning with
NORCO CO-OP responsible for the promotion and development of
on-farm planning to secure milk supply and meet market demands.

Fiona is passionate about contributing to the improved outcomes of
rural communities, businesses, and agricultural industries. Most recently,
Fiona has worked as team leader for The Smith Family where she
successfully led her team through a range of programs, resulting in
the improved life outcomes of disadvantaged children. Fiona also keeps
herself busy as a business partner for a farming enterprise,
which currently runs beef cattle. 

To connect with Fiona please see below. 

Email: dxmanager@abri.une.edu.au
or call: 1800 633 165