Meade Agri’s challenge: With increasing industry focus on carbon emissions and methane management, they needed a reliable way to measure and manage feed efficiency variations.
How Vytelle helped: Vytelle’s systematic 49-day testing protocol provided predictable, reliable EPD data that allowed Meade Agri to integrate feed efficiency directly into their breeding objectives.
About Meade Agri
The Meade family’s business, Meade Agri, operates three distinct operations – a commercial cattle herd, set to calve down 650 cows and heifers this year, alongside Pelican Rise Limousin and a fullblood Wagyu herd, Beechy Wagyu, which they plan to expand to between 750 and 1,000 cows.
Operating across 2000ha of owned and leased land in Victoria’s Colac region, this scale of operation requires sophisticated management approaches to optimise performance across their diverse breeding objectives.
The challenge: Measuring what matters
The Meades recognised that traditional breeding approaches were not sufficient for their long-term objectives. The turning point came during 2022 and 2023 as industry conversations increasingly focused on potential carbon taxes and emissions management. “We needed a way to measure and manage methane output in livestock,” Paul Meade explained.
The solution: Vytelle SENSE™
After extensive research into feed efficiency and genetic differences between cattle, the family made the strategic decision to partner with Vytelle, implementing their Vytelle SENSE system fourteen months ago to bring scientific precision to their breeding program.
Vytelle SENSE, a proprietary individual animal data capture system, records feed intake and in-pen weight gain measurements to help identify elite-performing animals expressing economically and environmentally important traits.
A new shed now hosts the Vytelle net intake bunks with solar power, a weigh station, an angled roof to encourage airflow, and an advanced feed efficiency system with electronic identification readings. This facility allows them to measure feed intake across the herd with unprecedented accuracy.
“We’re now able to view EPDs (Estimated Progeny Differences), which means we can integrate feed efficiency directly into our breeding objectives,” explained Paul. “Our goal is to produce animals that perform on less feed intake and meet their market specs for us and our customers. This is especially important in the wagyu space to maintain the high quality carcass,” he said.
The facility hosts animals in pens with wood chip based bedding for 63 days total, including a 14-day warm-up and 49-day test – a systematic approach that delivers consistent, reliable data.
“We’re seeing up to 2.5 kilograms of feed intake variation per kilogram of weight gain – so there’s a lot of room for improvement.”
Paul says he’s already working on turning the data collected into an index or breeding objective tool that guides smarter, more targeted breeding decisions.
Commercialising the capability
The value found from their new feed efficiency facility led to their decision to contract it out to other local seedstock producers. With plans to operate five trials annually and treating the facility as a standalone business, they’ve established a regional hub for genetic testing that extends far beyond their own breeding program.
“Other producers using our shed have reported that clients are now attending their bull sales specifically seeking animals with feed efficiency data. People are starting to select for that trait, and I think we’re going to see a lot more of it,” said Paul.
The growing demand for feed efficiency information signals that data-driven breeding decisions are becoming the new industry standard, moving from competitive advantage to market necessity. Meade Agri’s investment in Vytelle SENSE positions them at the forefront of this transformation, creating value not just for their own operations but for the broader seedstock industry seeking reliable, predictable genetic progress.
