We aim to breed cattle
that will thrive under our hill country conditions here on Otonga. To this
end we have a simple programme based on stockmanship and commonsense. The
need for our cattle to convert grass grown on hill country to tender beef without any supplements, not even hay,
shapes our breeding policy. The only exception to this regime is the feeding of some hay to the
rising 2yr bulls coming up to sale time. Replacement heifers are run as one
mob after weaning on very steep country where they all have an equal
opportunity, but are deliberately put under some stress to see how they can
handle it. At selection time in the spring the biggest and the best are kept.
Hardly rocket science but a simple system that works. After 30 years our stud
herd of 250 females are good big cows that milk well and have outstanding
constitution. Even on our steep hills it is very difficult to get condition
off the cows after weaning. Because of our policy of not using
American genetics it has become harder and harder to find suitable bulls
to introduce. For this reason approximately 10yrs ago we decided to close the
herd and use our own yearling and two year sires. Growth and constitution are
the driving force behind sire selection, along with temperament soundness and
depth of body. Depth and length of body
have the biggest influence on carcase weight but are not that easy to
achieve in the same package. Breeding long cattle is not particularly
difficult but without depth constitution suffers. We have been breeding all
the bulls for our 450 cow commercial herd for over 30 years and during that
time we have consistently topped the market with our 18 month steers in calf
cows and rising 2 year heifers. Recently 102 surplus 2yr commercial heifers
set a New Zealand record when they sold at auction for $1100. We regard our
commercial herd as our most valuable selection tool, and by selling all our
cattle at auction the bulls from the stud herd are subjected to the ultimate
progeny test.
Breeding Policy
Yearling Waimata stud heifers
learning to live in the real world