A Conservation Open Day is to be held at Saltwells Nature Reserve, Brierley
Hill in the West Midlands on 5 October 2005. The Murray Grey Beef Cattle Society
is arranging this event in association with Dudley Borough Council and the
Grazing Animals Project. This will be a wonderful opportunity to see Murray Grey
Beef Cattle used for conservation grazing to produce top quality beef, with a
whole range of wild life benefits.
A Commercial Open Day is to be held at Old House Farm, Bickerstaff, Ormskirk on
Sunday 7 August 2005. The Society is arranging this event in association with
British Belgian Blue Cattle Society. This will be a good chance to see Murray
Greys being used, for what they are supremely good at, that is suckled calf
production. It will be an opportunity to discuss with two breed societies the
attributes of their cattle in cross bred production. There will be details of
Breedplan and Genestar recording to improve production on show. A good
commercial day.
The Breed Society will be taking a stand with cattle on display. We feel this will be a good opportunity to showcase the breed to our target market ie suckler cow breeders. Come along and support us.
We are pleased to report that a further supply of semen has been sent out to St Helena. This was arranged by our new partners Beef Semen Online. They have 15 calves from the first importation, which have gone on to thrive. So a new outpost of Murray Greys has been established. We can also advise that Neils de la Cour is in fact going out to St Helena this summer, so will be able to bring back first hand news and photos. So watch this space.
We have started to get back results from Australia on gene testing for marbling and tenderness. The stock bulls for the Darose and Sence Valley herds are 5 stars out of 6 for these traits. This puts them in the top 30 in the published results for the breed worldwide. So we have a good message to bring to cattle breeding in the UK. We hope that this will spur other breeders on to get some of their cattle tested to support the results we have got already.