KWA News | 21 March 2025 - Koolang Wagyu Australia

The Season

This morning we received a glorious 3mls of rain. This is definitely not enough to make a difference but it does show that it is possible for it to rain. While Clear Hills still has some feed, it is clear that across the south the situation is becoming rather menacing. There are some forecasts which suggest a slightly wetter April and May so we will have to take comfort from this.

Progress

The major change which we have seen this year is the ability to use In-Vitro fertilisation. This involves extracting embryos from donor cows and inserting semen into the embryos in the lab. The advantage is that a single straw of semen can be used to fertilise many embryos. We have used Mr Awesome semen this year and are looking forward to fine progeny from this Sire. We have 43 fertilised embryos from this process in storage ready to be implanted in October November during our normal joining cycle.

above picture: Mr. Awesome

The other major change in the industry is the development of new tools for calculating inbreeding in the Wagyu breed. This is particularly important for Wagyu in Australia because of the limited number of animals originally imported into the country and the highly focused breeding strategies of many participants in the industry.

The current inbreeding coefficients available for animals in the Wagyu breed are based on pedigree information, this does not account for actual transmission of chromosomal DNA through generations. We have typically avoided matings which resulted in a greater than 10% inbreeding coefficient.

The AWA is moving to calculate two seperate indexes to provide data around the exact inbreeding in each animal.

The first is the Genomic Inbreeding coefficient that calculates the actual genomic similarity (homozygosity) between two animals. The AWA states that, “calculation of genomic inbreeding coefficients across registered sires provided a range of inbreeding from 2% to 39% with an average close to 12%.”

A second measure of this important feature of the wagyu breed is the Genetic Diversity score. This provides an estimate of how closely each individual animal is genomically related to every other animal in the database. Animals which are closely related have a low genetic diversity scores. This calculation is done on the basis of registration with the AWA over the last five years. In order to interpret the diversity score one should assume a diversity of 50 is close to average anything significantly less than 50 has low diversity, anything significantly higher than 50 has high diversity. We are seeking higher Diversity scores in our mating selections.

Much more information about this important development is available on the AWA website.

The Market

The F1 Wagyu market is not doing well. Prices are now generally on par with the best Angus cattle. We have to assume that the premium for Wagyu will reappear as the surplus supply of F1s created by the high prices in 2022 is absorbed and the market comes back to a more normal equilibrium.

A major uncertainty for us here in Australia is of course the prospect of TT (Trump Tariffs). This would be an excuse for further downward pressure on prices.

In the Bull market this is a terrific opportunity to pick up outstanding genetics at very. reasonable prices. We are now only offering young bulls with a marble score EBV 2.0 or higher. Such amazing quality was only dreamt of 5 years ago.