Introduction to BASCO
 A number of breed societies decided to cooperate when replacing their
existing databases for pedigree registration and herd book administration.
This led to the formation of a company called BASCO that these founding
societies use as a holding company, thereby allowing the individual
founder members to continue servicing their members as autonomous independent
organisations promoting their respective breeds. The rest, as they
say, is history.
Or is it? Perhaps the best is yet to come. Following
the award of a major grant from the Agricultural Development Scheme
(ADS) provided by Defra, developments in the original database to incorporate
health and fertility traits, the joining of BASCO by Signet and the
genetic evaluations being undertaken in Edinburgh by SAC have all been
initiated; this being the start of a development program that will
lead to a major breeding and performance recording company operating
in the UK for UK farmers, using UK parameters for evaluation and most
importantly, owned and controlled by UK farmers.
What will this mean
to UK producers? This article sets out the benefits of this co-operative
venture and explores where this process will lead. It finishes off
with a plan of action to be implemented by BASCO over the next 5 years.
BASCO
The holding company is simply a vehicle by which the participants can
organise themselves and divide the cost and benefits of cooperative
action in an organised and equitable manner. BASCO currently employs
nobody and subcontracts all its activity out. It is run by a Board
of Directors drawn from the founder members. It may be thought of
as a brand name.
OBJECTIVES
The company's objectives are to profitably run the business of storing
a wide range of relevant animal data on an easy to use web-based
database, developing the database to suit future anticipated needs
and managing that whole process. Its surpluses are currently deployed
in developing the database to enable each founder member to increasingly
provide a wider range of services and products to its respective
customer base. The company business model is based on making a small
financial surplus from the transaction charges made to each of its
founder members and to extending its services to other customers.
BASCO has no intention
of replacing the activity of its founder members in breed promotion
and development. Its intention is to undertake that part of breed society
work that is most profitably shared such as database maintenance.
COOPERATIVE ACTIVITY
BASCO's belief is that Breed Societies will come under progressively
greater pressure as the inevitable increase in recording required
by legislation and quality assurance places a burden on farmers that
could displace registrations. In effect, Societies will be better
placed to resist that pressure if they can become more relevant to
their members by providing a wider range of services and by increasing
the value to their members of the information they collect. They
have chosen to co-operate with each other and with other organisations,
such as Signet, NSP and BCMS to bring that about. The reduced cost
of service development cooperatively and the bringing together of
disparate data sources (e.g. Pedigree and performance data from breed
societies and Signet respectively) to provide a service that is greater
than the sum of its parts will ensure that success.
DATABASE
The database has been developed by Scotland 's biggest software house,
Graham Technology. They employ a Java based software product that
allows the program to be built from subcomponents and to re-use business
rules already established. The data is stored in an Oracle database
on a SUN server. All this means it is leading edge technology using
Industry standard protocols on a scaleable database. Its future is
assured.
It is accessed over the internet so that all users (office
staff and farmers alike) use the same program and look at the same
data. It is fast enough to be very usable even over a normal dial up
internet connection. Over Broadband it is extremely fast.
PERFORMANCE RECORDING & SIGNET
Signet has joined forces with BASCO to create and use a single data
source for all performance and pedigree recording. All animal data
from any breed that is collected by Signet will be stored on the
BASCO database. Obviously, animals already entered on the database
by pedigree breeders will be used by Signet when performance records
for these animals are generated. This will reduce costs considerably
allowing for greater emphasis on development of novel services by both
BASCO and Signet.
A further benefit of a single data source for all animals will be
that farmers themselves could enter data directly on to the database
if they so wish. Those without the time or inclination to use computers
can still use Signet or BASCO members to input the data for them
HEALTH DATA
A number of structural changes to support mechanisms, increasing requirements
for quality assurance, interest from consumers (supermarkets) in the
methods of food production and costs associated with treating animals
have led to the development of management systems and breeds that
are categorised as 'Easycare' in sheep and low cost maintenance in
beef. In short the market wants meat that is produced with less veterinary
treatments, is produced in a welfare friendly fashion and has records
to support this. Farmers want to produce meat profitably and with
less human intervention since this equates to cost. There is an obvious
balance required between farmers' needs and market needs in terms of
welfare.
To enable its members to respond to this change to market requirements
and lead in satisfying sheep and beef supply into this market, BASCO
is currently adding further health recording facilities to its database.
The benefit of this will be twofold at least
1. records will be available to members for management purposes
2. the system will aid in quality assurance to prospective buyers
3. records can be used to produce EBV's for subsequent selection
The system will
contain diseases already coded and grouped into logical groups e.g.
feet problems, udder problems and will contain an extensive list of
treatments with their respective codes. This will ensure that all records
are comparable since they will be coded correctly and will also reduce
the need for data input by breeders.
FERTILITY RECORDING
Obviously, in all breeding programs recording of inseminations or natural
matings is paramount to success. These records are usually made and
held on farm and seldom find their way into single national databases.
The BASCO database is being enhanced to enable farmers to record
fertility data in a way that encourages recording. Generally in dairy
herds, animals are artificially inseminated individually. However,
in beef and sheep matings are mostly natural with a bull or ram running
with a number of animals. Therefore, the fertility recording process
will allow for animals to be allocated to groups and a sire allocated
to that group for a period of time. Subsequent confirmation of pregnancy
will cause a fertility record to be created.
The availability of these records will enable farmers to manage their
animals more effectively and also to identify females that are performing
poorly in terms of reproduction. A further major benefit will be that
fertility indices could be calculated from the raw records, thereby
identifying males of superior fertility and families of females that
could better be bred from.
The system will contain a master list of health events and a master
list of treatments. Users will select those they most often use and
these will be presented to users by default thereby reducing the need
to scroll through a list containing many entries that are not used
by the farmer. Of course, the farmer can add and delete from the 'local
list' without affecting the master list used by all farmers.
NOVEL TRAITS
The availability of a state-of-the-art web based database will enable
and encourage the recording of a wider range of traits on more animals.
A complete list of those traits is not yet known since nobody knows
what might be important to buyers in the future. However, a number
of traits have aroused interest and are currently being investigated
for their heritability and ease of recording. A good example is calf
and lamb vigour at birth and another example is meat eating quality
(see below).
Mark et demand may also include demands made by legislation such as
those relating to environmental impact and other social requirements
such as those relating to animal welfare. The BASCO database will keep
up with changing demands and will anticipate recording requirements
ahead of time thereby providing its members with proactive tools with
which to react.
SUPERMARKETS AND MARKETS REQUIREMENTS
The value of the red meat sector is around £9 billion at retail value and
the benefit of objective genetic improvement in this sector, at its current modest
level of uptake, is calculated to be worth a total of £14 million per year.
The amount of value added to a breeder's flock or herd is dependent on the correct
choice of sires and then mating those sires to the appropriate dams. The resulting
offspring contain the breeders profit presuming that the animals are demanded
by the market. The ultimate aim of BASCO founder members is to assist its members
in achieving this increased profit by providing relevant information to facilitate
the correct breeding decisions being made.
PROMOTING PERFORMANCE RECORDING
A sub-objective of the promotion of genetic indices is to bring about
an increase in the number of farmers participating in performance
recording. This will have a number of spin-off benefits such as an
improvement in the cohesion of producers to a common goal known to
have quantifiable benefits. It also provides more accurate EBV's
to all breeders which in turn increases confidence in indices leading
in turn to an increase in their uptake. At present, performance recording
in the sheep sector is low (around 5% of Breed Society members) and
only marginally higher in beef (around 10% of Limousin Society members).
The objective is to double the number of performance recorded flocks
and herds by the end of three years.
CUSTOMISED HERD/FLOCK INDICES
The ability to have results customised to match farmers breeding programmes
will be of benefit to many producers as they will be able to rank
and select animals in their herd based on their own criteria. This
provides the opportunity to make improvements in specific traits
pertinent to the farms' economic and physical circumstances. Recent
experience from Australia suggests that the availability of a customisation
process will lead to an increase in the penetration of indices into
livestock production systems partly as a result of the index being
considered more appropriate and partly because the farmer feels more
in control of the process.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
The database is under constant development to provide UK breeders the
necessary tools and data to compete with all other international
meat producers. BASCO see this as a primary objective of the database
and indeed for all breed societies and UK meat producers - our biggest
competitors are not each other but our overseas colleagues who would
sell more meat to us and our customers if we allow them to!
Examples of future developments are:
Using PDA's as input methods for farmers. The PDA would be attached
to a PC linked to the database, would then download all the herd/flock
data and be used by the farmer to collect data in the field e.g.
calvings/lambings, incidences of disease etc. At the end of a period
of 1 or more days, the PDA would be re-attached to the PC and any
changed and new data would be uploaded to the database.
Connection
to other databases containing slaughter data so we can connect up
breeding and farm data to eventual carcass and economic data. This
would enable farmers to more closely see the effects of their farm
management and breeding decisions.
Outputting forms and reports that
can be used in farm assurance schemes or for inputs into subsidy payment
schemes.
SUMMARY
The future for livestock breeders and meat producers will be characterised
by more recording and better use of information. The BASCO database
has been created to enable breeders to meet those challenges and
to exploit information to meet market requirements. The database
and the holding company will both develop over time to ensure that
BASCO thrives as a means of ensuring its members thrive.
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