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Valera Vale Droughtmasters is a large scale stud and commercial ca le enterprise opera ng on two proper es in Western Qld: (Pinnacle, 32,000 acres near Augathella and Yanna Sta on, 57,000 acres between Charleville and Wyandra), mul ple proper es in Southeast Qld, and the Cleary’s bull depot, Avilion just west of Warwick. We also have a partnership with AJ Bush and Sons at Bromelton which produces about 750 weaners annually, and lease Logan Park at Tamrookum from Libby Murphy and family. All up the herd consists of over 8,000 pure Droughtmasters. Most of the Valera Vale income is from the sale of fat and feeder ca le and the stud contributes a rela vely minor por on of the revenue. The main reason the stud was formed and s ll exists today is to produce reliable, commercially profitable gene cs for our commercial business. As such we are focused on things that ma er to the bo om line and don’t look to breed ca le that just look pre y. If it isn’t related to profit in a commercial enterprise, we don’t focus on it. We understand firsthand the struggle to make a profit in the real beef industry. All of the bulls and heifers catalogued have been DNA tested by Neogen Australasia to inform Parentage, Poll gene and Gene c disease incidence (including Double Muscling), and facilitate Genomic analysis to deliver Droughtmaster Single Step BreedPlan and Base Pair Mul -Breed Genomic Breeding Value data. As the names imply the Breedplan figures are rela ve to the Droughtmaster breed averages and the Base Pair analysis is across breeds in Northern Australia. Poll: All of the bulls catalogued are “pure polls”: they have two copies of the poll gene and will reliably pass on one copy to all their progeny. PcPc/Double Poll bulls are the only way to progress to an en rely Polled/Scurred herd. As the Polled (Pc) gene is dominant to the Horned (H) gene, animals having at least one copy of the polled gene do not grow true horns but may be scurred. It is our experience that very few of the HPc females and steers grow much in the way of scurs. The heifer catalogue is en rely polled, but some are not homozygous as noted in this data sheet and the catalogue. The test used in the Valera Vale herd is the latest SNP test which we have found to be very accurate. We were frustrated with the unreliability of the earlier MiP test, but the SNP test has proven very accurate in our herd. We are involved in several genomics research projects including the search for a possible gene for scurs in gene cally polled animals by Dr. Im az Randhawa. This has involved comple ng Whole Genome Sequencing of four of our PcPc bulls that have grown small scurs to find unique gene/genome features resul ng in the expression of scurs if indeed one exists. Page1