An overview of current and potential hill country livestock systems
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33584/rps.16.2016.3236Abstract
This paper reviews current production trends for sheep and beef cattle production in New Zealand and gives some insight into the opportunities for improvement. The New Zealand climate favours pasture growth and this is the key to sheep and beef cattle production with over 95% of the diet being grazed pasture or crop. Exports are the focus of the industry with 92% of sheep meat and 82% of beef exported. There has been a 72% increase in sheep meat production since 1990, but there still remains opportunity for further increases through breeding sheep at an earlier age, increasing the weight of lambs weaned per ewe per year, increased efficiency of breeding cows and utilisation of calves from the dairy industry for beef production. Keywords: Sheep meat, beef cattle, pasture, intensification, environment
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Rights granted to the New Zealand Grassland Association through this agreement are non-exclusive. You are free to publish the work(s) elsewhere and no ownership is assumed by the NZGA when storing or curating an electronic version of the work(s). The author(s) will receive no monetary return from the Association for the use of material contained in the manuscript. If I am one of several co-authors, I hereby confirm that I am authorized by my co-authors to grant this Licence as their agent on their behalf. For the avoidance of doubt, this includes the rights to supply the article in electronic and online forms and systems.
