Close to 500 head of steers and heifers were mustered for this year’s Sydney Royal Beef Challenge, held at the MacCue family’s Wilga feedlot at Bellata.
Now in it’s sixth year, organiser Mike MacCue, said this year’s 498 entries were made up of 55 domestic team entries in pens of six and 28 teams of six in the export section.
The cattle are judged on the hoof as teams of six as well as individuals. The remainder of the competition is all objective.
“The live assessment is the only subjective part of the that we have in the whole competition,” Mr MacCue said.
“The criteria of the competition was designed to be as commercially based as possible.
“It is all based off commercial reality with hitting grids and profitability.”
He said one of the biggest aspects is all six individuals in the team count towards the total score.
“This is because commercially all the animals determine how the pen goes, not just the best of them,” he said.
Live assessments were held on June 27 and within a week they were trucked out.
“The live assessment is scored as a team – we are looking at the group for market suitability and evenness,” Mr MacCue said.
“The rest is divided in to stages of the supply chain.”
These include carcase grid compliance, carcase judge scores, a meat quality score based on the Meat Standards Australia (MSA) index, and profitably, driven by both compliance and with the abattoir specifications and MSA score.
The feedlot score, which counts for 30 per cent of the total, is a combination of the daily weight gains and dressing percentages and the consistency of those scores.
