CRV Ambreed adds analytical grunt to animal breeding team

CRV Ambreed adds analytical grunt to animal breeding team

Herd improvement company, CRV Ambreed, has expanded its animal breeding team with two top analysts.

Simon McLachlan is the company’s new Animal Co-ordinator and Erin O’Connor is the company’s new Breeding Programme Analyst. The two appointments add further depth to CRV Ambreed’s analytical expertise within its animal breeding programme.

CRV Ambreed’s Breeding Programme Manager, Aaron Parker, said the new staff join his team’s very experienced sire analysts – Georgie Smith and Mel Stevens. The whole team has a renewed focus on building great relationships with the company’s contract breeders.

“The success of CRV Ambreed is reliant on building and maintaining great relationships with breeders. Both Simon and Erin are looking forward to getting out and meeting key farmers around the country.

“Add to these great farmer relationships, our team’s depth of knowledge and experience and this all combines to make us very confident we’ll achieve the end result we’re after. That is, we aim to produce the country’s best young bull team and New Zealand’s top bull in four years’ time,” Aaron explained.

Aaron says the appointment of Simon and Erin take the already successful breeding team to a whole new level. “With the appointment of Simon and Erin, our team is able to use each of our strengths in ways that maximise each person’s unique skills better than ever before.

“Simon provides the analytical grunt while Erin continually ensures our bull team is performing to our very high performance targets. Meanwhile, Georgie and Mel are out in the field inspecting cows’ physical characteristics which is a highly skilled art. My role is leading the team and keeping them moving in the right direction at a rate of knots.”

As Animal Co-ordinator, Simon McLachlan’s key responsibility is coordinating the company’s progeny testing programme. He said, “I’ll be working closely with our 150 progeny testing herds throughout the country. My analytical background and training will allow me to put those skills to work as we analyse the physical characteristics and herd test data of daughters born to our young bulls within our progeny testing programme. A key part of my role is ensuring the genetics within our progeny testing programme are well-distributed right
throughout the country.”

Prior to moving to CRV Ambreed, Simon was involved with the establishment and
implementation of a breeding programme for milking sheep as part of his role in setting up a dairy sheep breeding programme and database for Blue River Dairy LP in Invercargill.

Simon said he was attracted to work for CRV Ambreed because the company, “continues to punch above its weight in the industry. It’s a great company full of highly skilled people; it’s going to be a great place to learn and grow in my career.”

As Breeding Programme Analyst, Erin O’Connor says, “I have the exciting role of identifying elite cows throughout New Zealand and working with breeders to bring them into CRV Ambreed so we can get great sires from them to slot into our progeny testing programme.

I’ll also be analysing the company’s sire breeding values to determine which bulls become part of our sire marketing team.”

Erin’s last professional role was Farm Information Manager with Van Diemen’s Land Company in Tasmania – a corporate farming company with 25 dairy farms, running 30,000 stock.

Erin explained CRV Ambreed’s international backing attracted her to the role: “CRV Ambreed’s international scope means we can tap into the company’s expertise relating to sire production systems all over the world. Bringing the best-of-the-best into our New Zealand breeding programme for the benefit of New Zealand farmers is a great opportunity.”

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