Contact Us

Gabni Wagyu The Elite Meat

name="Microsoft B

Our Wagyu Experience

The Story so far ... as at May 2008 - Wagyu or Non-Wagyu?

We are situated near the sea-side town of Tooradin, Victoria, Australia on almost 200 acres. During the drought of 2006, we had 34 spring calves born, 8 of which we had to pull, and of them 2 were pulled between midnight and dawn.

We had to sell most of our cattle so we decided to get into a different breed. And what better breed than the delicacy that is Wagyu.

That was 15 months ago and we are now about to calf down our last 2 autumn Wagyu calves. These 2 will bring our total to 19 Wagyu calves (and we have only had to pull one due to a superficial injury to the cow prior to birth - both cow and calf are doing well). Thank goodness for small birth weights!

We decided to buy embryos and put them into recipients. We also bought 2 Wagyu heifers to produce our own embryos and to offer embryos for sale. We also bought 5 springing FULLBLOOD Wagyu.

I have had very mixed reactions from telling people that we are breeding Wagyu, from "they are the cattle you have to massage and give beer to" to "it's a very limited market". It would be a very limited market if Japan was the only country to consume Wagyu. Wagyu is an exploding phenomenon spanning to every continent in the world to literally being the special of the night at our pub down the road in Pakenham on a Thursday night!

To be continued ...

July 2008 Update - Flushing Embryos

Well we have been very busy the last few weeks. We finished our Autumn calving. We now have 19 calves in total (9 heifers and 10 bulls).

We have also just completed our first on farm flush with a fantastic result. 14 embryos from one cow and 6 embryos from another.

We coordinated some recipients to be ready on the day of the flush and were able to transfer 12 (6 from each flush) of the embryos fresh which usually gives a better uptake rate. The remaining 8 embryos were frozen

We were doing flushes on 2 heifers but after 4 poor flush results of zero to three embryos we decided to sack them from our flush program and put them in calf.

Unfortunately it is impossible to tell if a heifer or cow is going to be a "good flusher" until you flush them. In very broad terms 1/3 of donors are poor donors producing less than 3 embryos, 1/3 of donors are fair to good donors producing 3-10 embryos and 1/3 of donors are excellent producing more than 10 embryos. Only about 2% of donors produce more than 20 embryos.

We plan to do another farm flush in a few weeks.......

September 2008 Update - The Pregnancy Tests - That elusive 100%

Following our farm flush and insertion of fresh embryos into our coordinated programmed recipients 9 weeks ago, we had David Morris from Bass Valley Embryos come out and pregnancy test our recipients and we got.............wait for it.................8 positives out of a possible 12 (66%). A good result. The last few transfers we have done we have consistently been getting well over the 50% which seems to be quoted as the average overall result when dabbling in transfers. When compared to the 33% achieved in our first transfer program 66% is very good. We have learnt a lot since our first transfer program.

Of course there are so many factors involved in a transfer program, both controllable and uncontrollable that influence the chances of an embryo transfer working or not.

Some of these factors in potential recipients, that we have found from reading and our experience, that seem to be important to increase the chances of a transfer being successful include :

Selecting fertile recipients - as a general rule young cows are apparently more fertile as recipients than either heifers or cows.
Nutrition of the recipients is very important. They need to be on a rising plane of nutrition. Lots of hay and not to much protein. To much protein can lead to cysts which means that you go through all the preparation only to have the recipient rejected at the time of insertion of the embryo. Very frustrating.
It is also important that any possible trace element deficiencies are corrected. We found our success rate improved dramatically after we started using rumen pellets of Copper, Cobalt and Selenium. They last for 12-24 months. Or else an injectible or water supply form can be used.
We have found that it seems best to wait until at least 3 months after a cow has calved before using her as a recipient.
It is also important to make sure the recipient cows are closely observed to make sure they are day seven post heat. We found the investment in bulling beacons very worthwhile. It beats standing and watching cows for 45mis 3-4 times a day for 3 days like we used to do.
Of course making sure worming and vaccinations are up to date contributes to the overall success rate
Transferring fresh embryos is said to improve the uptake rate of embryos, but coordinating a flush and a transfer on the same day is challenging. Challenging but very satisfying if it all comes together. We have done this twice now including our last lot of transfers which we coordinated with our first farm flush of embryos.

Of course there are lots of other factors that can have an influence. I would love to hear of other peoples experiences and how they have improved there uptake rates, and with their permission I will put them on my website. In fact if you have any information or Wagyu anecdotes you would like to share I could set up a page to share them around.

In other news we had 4 calves last week. 3 heifers sired by Michifuku and a bull sired by Itoshigefugi (TF147). Mothers and babies doing well.

Send mail to with