A snapshot of research in animal production in New Zealand

This edition of the New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research (NZJAR) has been compiled from the 83rd conference of the New Zealand Society of Animal Production (NZSAP) held in Rotorua in November 2023. We are honoured to collaborate with NZJAR to publish our members research in the journal.

The papers in this special edition bring together multiple disciplines that were presented at the conference. The aim of the conference is to promote discussion and collaboration of research conducted within the animal production sections of New Zealand science.

The first paper of the issue is that of our Young Member Award winning presenter, Katie Starsmore. The Young Members Award is designed to promote and foster excellence in science within animal production. The award has several criteria including that the researcher must be the first author on their paper and it must be either their first or second presentation to the society. Once those criteria are fulfilled the applicants must compete against their peers in an evaluation of the work that was required to get their communication to a standard required for presentation. This includes the state of their manuscript at the time of submission for consideration, and the number of changes/amendments which were required to get it to an accepted state. The final hurdle, and considerably the greatest hurdle, is to present their scientific research to a room filled with their scientific peers. From this process, the judges make a difficult decision and come to a singular award winner. Katie Starsmores winning presentation and article is titled ‘Residual methane emissions in grazing lactating dairy cows’. This research reports that a low residual method emission group of animals has lower methane yield and intensity, indicating a selective ability independent of productivity traits.

From this starting point, we have chosen a set of themes throughout the edition to follow a topic through a process. Following Katie's article we have two papers on greenhouse gases; an investigation into the methane emissions from cattle fed differing levels of concentrate feeds, and a simulation of the number of spot samples required to estimate the ratio of methane to carbon dioxide in lambs. To transition from greenhouse gases to production research we have a bridging paper on the relationship between dietary factors and the partitioning of nitrogen to milk and urine under grazing conditions. This continues to be an area of national and international interest to minimise impacts on land and waterways. Then a report on the effects of breed and stage of lactation on milk fat between once and twice-a-day milking, and another looking at the effect of feeding zeolite on behaviour characteristics in dairy cattle. Both of these articles describe the management effects on the productive or behavioural performance of animals.

Then we move into sheep-based research, with a survey of ewe culling practices across New Zealand farms and the interaction of the number of lambs and suckling behaviour in triplet rearing ewes. The next three are all related to wool, there are multiple ways to adjust to low wool value in the industry. One is to remove the requirement for shearing, the other is to drive higher-value products through breeding. The first two papers target the shedding characteristics of Wiltshire and Wiltshire cross sheep, and the second reports the methodology to develop a breeding value for the shedding ability of sheep using industry data. The third article looks at wool characteristics, in the form of lustrous wool and its inheritance. The last two papers in this edition looking animal health, with the first looking into lameness on New Zealand goat farms, and the second investigating Mānuka honey as a health treatment for animal agriculture.

These papers provide a snapshot of the types of research that were presented at the NZSAP conference in 2023. We would welcome any interested parties to get involved with the society (https://www.nzsap.org/) and join us for our conference in November 2024 in Oamaru along with the New Zealand Grasslands Association and New Zealand Agronomy Society, one of the largest joint conferences across the primary industries held in New Zealand.