SOUTH AFRICA-CATTLE FOR NORTHERN AUSTRALIA.
TWO vastly different eating experiences with meat in South Africa and Australia were among the catalysts that has seen South Africa’s indigenous Nguni cattle breed become available to Australian cattle producers.
The Nguni breed, long the mainstay of traditional Zulu culture and recognised for their variously patterned and multicoloured hides, is now being bred in Australia and launched into the market by a number of producers, including Far North Queensland cattle producer and GP, Dr Gawie Roux.
At his Genesis Nguni Stud in the Kennedy Valley near Cardwell, Dr Roux has been developing the breed for the past five years and is among the producers to launch it on to the Australian market as the first to be selling Nguni genetics here, including bulls, embryos and semen.
Having grown up with cattle in South Africa, Dr Roux first tasted marbled Nguni meat as an 18-year-old.
Fast forward to the mid-1990s when Dr Roux and his family moved to Australia, and some memorably bad experiences trying to eat tough meat prompted Dr Roux to research the beef market in Australia.
"I realised Australia was in the middle of starting a change in the mid-1990s to improve the quality of meat," Dr Roux said.
"I went back to South Africa and spoke to researchers in the industry to find out what was the best on the South African market, and they all said Nguni."
Dr Roux joined forces with Australia beef producers Richard Gill and Doug Paton and formed the Nguni Association of Australia in 2006, with the index herds established by importing embryos sourced from a number of bloodlines from throughout South Africa.
"We went all over South Africa and looked for cattle with good phenotype, weight, and hindquarters, but the rest of the traits which are common in the breed, including fertility, quality of beef, resistance to diseases, and the easy-calving and good-mothering, we didn’t have to screen for any of those things."
Nguni cattle Bos Taurus Africanus descend from both Bos Taurus (major contribution) and Bos Indicus (minor contribution) cattle.
In South Africa, Dr Roux said the breed had started to grow in popularity amongst white South African farmers over the past 15 years, and were now among the top three most popular breeds there.
"White South African farmers who traditionally imported and cross-bred mainly with Bos Taurus from Europe never regarded indigenous Nguni cattle as of any significance, but it started changing when people started tasting the meat, and some of the cattle producers started to bring them in as a sideline to their herds, and realised the advantages they provided," Dr Roux said.
"The quest for high-quality beef, high profitability and low input finally broke the pre-occupation with European breeds and led to the growth of the Nguni industry."
Besides producing tender meat, their adaptability and ability to thrive under harsh conditions were among their many benefits, according to Dr Roux.
He said high fertility, especially with heifers at an early age, and their ability to grow out quickly had also helped with the popularity of the breed in South Africa.
"They possess excellent resistance to internal and external parasites with natural immunity to tick-borne diseases," he said.
"They do well in the tropics, but I think they do even better in dry conditions - they’ll round-off well in dry-as-bone country.
"And it’s not a composite breed - because of the stable genetics of an original breed of adapted cattle, the natural hybrid vigour makes the Nguni ideal to crossbreed with any brand of cattle in Australia.
"If you cross-breed it with northern breeds like Droughtmasters and Brahmans you get much increased motherhood, birth capabilities and score all the meat qualities you would have got with bringing in for instance, Angus from the south.
"If you cross the likes of Hereford and Angus with Nguni, you get disease resistance and add-on benefits from the hide."
Not surprisingly, the colourful Nguni hides are also a profitable side of the business - in South Africa, the hides are exported directly to European markets where they are tanned with their hair on.
"The hair is short and the skin is quite thin in comparison with other skins and has a good oil content and that oil content is believed to help with resistance to ticks and other insects."
* The Nguni Beef Breeders will be at Beef 2009, Rockhampton, Site 32 in the Durack Pavilion. For more information about the Genesis Nguni genetics sale contact Dr Gawie Roux, (07) 4066 0202 after hours.
