Progressive Meats and Winder's Lambs
Measuring carcass yields at Progressive Meats pays dividends for Texel sheep producers
Hugh and Helen Winders’ lambs have the highest saleable yield measured by their meat processor Progressive Meats. They have been farming Texel sheep since the sheep came out of quarantine in 1990. Their lamb drafter at the time offered them a Texel ram to try. ‘He was a little wee fellow and we tried him out over a second cut of Romney ewes.” Despite his initial doubts, the lambs just blossomed, Hugh says. Texels are intelligent sheep, are fantastic mothers, Hugh says. The lambs stick with their mothers, and their mothers “milk like billy-oh”.
When they are born the lambs get up and are straight in to the milk. After about three weeks their bottoms start to grow – the breed is known for its muscly bottom.
Their lambs average 300g/day from birth to weaning, which only takes around 80 days. The lambs are weaned at an average of 28kg.
“They are lovely sheep to handle, and good to see, and then the meat is perfect. Everything about them is brilliant.” He says their easy laidback temperament has to be one reason they produce such good meat. “And yes, they taste good. I love my lamb,” Hugh says. He prefers a rolled shoulder.
And plenty of other people agree, because the Winders’ have had lots of success with their Texels, winning the Glammies award in 2010.
The Glammies competition, officially named the Beef + Lamb NZ Golden Lamb Awards, aims to find the tenderest and tastiest lamb in New Zealand.
“This year we missed out getting into the final by a couple of points.” Previously, they were finalists in 2008, and third in 2009.
The couple have a flock of 450 recorded ewes on their 200 effective ha farm. Of all the lambs born, they tag the 600 best each year, and from these the following year sell stud and commercial two-tooth Texel rams. They also have a commercial flock of ewes on the farm, producing Texel Romney cross lambs.
All their saleable lambs go to Lean Meats at 21-22kg. Lean Meats lambs get their lambs processed by Progressive Meats, where the Winders’ get good premiums because of the high level of saleable yield.
“Craig Hickson at Progressive Meats is a perfectionist. It’s a dream of his to reward farmers who are breeding sheep with more saleable meat on them. We are very fortunate he has done this by physically boning it off the carcass.”
Hugh says the high levels of saleable yield produced by their Texel sheep have increased their returns. “We are getting rewarded for putting more meat on the carcass. If the saleable yield is 105%, that gives a return 5% above schedule weights. Say the schedule is $7/kg, the 5% gives another 35cents/kg premium above the schedule. For a 20kg lamb, that’s $7 extra which is quite significant. It’s easy money if you are doing it. And the consumer is getting a brilliant product with a decent piece of meat.”
He thinks farmers who are not reaching the 100% yield level should use Texels over their ewes to get halfbred lambs.
Hugh also sells a few lambs locally, supplying the Edelweiss Butchery in Feilding, which is run by a Swiss butcher, who is the fourth generation in smallgoods manufacturing. This butcher buys a couple of lambs a fortnight from them. “I send them in pairs, because by themselves they would stress.”
For the last five years Progressive Meats’ processing plant owner Craig Hickson has been developing a way to measure the actual meat yield from lamb carcasses. The boning room system at his Hastings processing planted allows each lamb cut from every carcass to be weighed. If lambs deliver a saleable meat yield above or below average, farmers receive an adjusted schedule price. “Measuring saleable yield is an exciting development which offers the meat industry the greatest potential” says Craig.
There are three main points to emphasise:
1. yield and labour productivity are the two main value drivers in the processing sector.
2. there has been a focus on productivity, because it has been able to be measured, for a long time. But while yield has always been known to be important, because it couldn’t be continuously or easily measured, it has had less effective focus.
3. the system we have installed measures two things. The first is the individual performance of our boners. The second measurement, which is more important for the long term, is the variation in yield between animals. This second measurement allows for selection, development of breeding values and improvement via genetics of the potential yield of the lamb population over time.
This last point is the most exciting development and has the greatest potential for New Zealand.
On plant, people management is about realising the potential yield of the lambs supplied, and we are very dependent on the skills and aptitude of the staff. We have a system that allows us to precisely measure and reward the performance of individual boners. Previously it wasn’t easy to do, so it didn’t get done very often. We started measuring and reporting individual performance six years ago which has resulted in a major improvement in both the level and consistency of yield achieved.
The genetic selection process is about improving the potential yield of the lambs supplied through selection of animals with the greatest potential for breeding.
We are in our third year of providing information to farmers about yields, and in our second season of paying farmers for yield. The system has been operating for six years with the first three years used to settle the system down, fine-tune it and reduce the error rate prior to publishing results.
In the 2010/2011 season few farmers took up the saleable yield option, but there has been quite an upsurge in 2011/12, though still less than 25% of our suppliers opt to be paid for saleable yield. This is partly because 50% of lambs in the population are below average and will receive less than the average price. Manawatu farmer Hugh Winders is a stand-out performer, and we would like to see more animals like Hugh’s every day.
There is quite a variation within all breeds, but certainly Hugh’s animals have performed consistently well. In comparison to a population average, Hugh’s animals have consistently, for the same liveweight on the farm, delivered in the order 15% additional value as cuts in the box. This added value is achieved with a combination of saleable yield and dressing out percentage, and is the equivalent of around $17/lamb compared to our population average. We are assuming here a 40kg liveweight animal and $6.50/kg hot carcase weight schedule.
Two other industry players, Alliance with its Viascan, and Silver Fern Farms with its x-rays have also recognised the importance of yield and introduced technology to provide yield reporting and payment, including the development of breeding values.
Landcorp pioneered genetic selection for yield well before there was any reward for superior yielding animals. Similarly, the Wairarapa Romney Improvement Group has been recording with us and selecting for yield for more than 15 years. Other parties showing early interest are Kelso and Rick Spence of St Leger at Gisborne.
I started investigating yield measurements in 1996 with my own customized method. Unfortunately it didn’t prove reliable enough so 10 years later I bought a Marel system from Iceland which was developed from fish weighing and sorting equipment. The Marel system is primarily used for pork and beef in the meat sector.
Ours is still the only installation for lamb in the Southern Hemisphere.
The system weighs and tracks every cut, from the farmer who supplies the lamb, the sawman who cut it and the boner who boned it.
At Progressive Meats suppliers with lines of 80 lambs or more can elect to be paid on the basis of saleable yield. At 100% Value Yield Index, the meat schedule price is paid. If the result is 101%, then 101% of the meat schedule price is paid. At a schedule price of $6.50/kg and 40kg liveweight, approximately 95% of the population falls within plus or minus $14 of the population average. This gives a $28 range top to bottom.
The first and largest impact on overall yield comes from the dressing out yield (liveweight to hot carcase weight), where animals routinely yield between 39-47% with an average of 43%. The second factor is chiller weight loss (hot carcass weight to cold carcase weight), managed by the plant, and the third factor is saleable yield (the conversion of cold carcass weight to saleable cuts). Prompt kill is important and contributes to the dressing out yield achieved.
Effective continuous improvement processes require four pillars:
1. a clear focus on the thing you want to improve
2. involvement of all the people who contribute towards achieving that improvement (teamwork)
3. the ability to measure improvement progress and
4. an effective feedback loop to each member of the team. The faster the feedback and the greater the reward or punishment, the more effective it is.
These four pillars are now in place for lamb yield improvement.
We have the focus on yield improvement, we can involve all the parties: farmers, geneticists and process floor workers; we have the means of measurement for both company and suppliers’ performance, and an effective feedback loop via the killsheet, which reports the saleable yield index by mob, and the value difference compared to the average, which is the schedule.
Any effective improvement process will involve payment for value differences between animals and between lines of animals. By definition this means half the animal population will get paid more and half the animal population will get paid less than the average.
As we operate in a competitive procurement field, the concern of an individual meat company, in offering value difference payments, is that the half of the population that will be paid less elects to sell their lambs to another company which pays for the average.
This is how competitive forces influence competing companies to also pay averages. It only takes one company to spark this behaviour. When this happens the continuous improvement process is broken, and continuous improvement does not occur, because there is no measurement, no feedback, and no reward or encouragement.
Examples of this are: no separate identified payment for wool per mob or line of lambs, and per head/all weights all grades purchasing.
We believe we should pay for the value we receive, and the farmer should receive the value of what they supply. That does not occur where you have price/value averaging.