In 1929 the Department of Agriculture of New South Wales started an Aberdeen Angus herd at the Agricultural Research Centre at Trangie with stock imported from Canada. Various additions to the herd were made, from Canada, from the United States, from the United Kingdom and from other herds in Australia, until the herd-book was closed in 1964. From about this time, various research projects were conducted at Trangie. In 1974 an investigation of the correlation between growth rate and profitability, and of whether feed conversion efficiency was higher in large or in small animals fed on grass, was begun.