Lauren Berecry - Trans Tasman Exchange 2014: Week 2

Sunday evening I arrived at Atahua Angus owned by Alan and Michele Dalziell. The stud consists of 140 cows running on the main property located at Kiwitea with an additional 50 cows run at the Apiti property. Combined the properties cover 1300ac and in addition to the stud they also run 3600 sheep.

Apiti

I spent the next two and a half days with the Dalziell’s looking through the herd and getting the chance to see some outstanding females! Consistency in structure, volume and punch was present throughout the females. There was a definite type of easy doing naturally thick cattle that were very impressive on the hill country.

Moving between breaks

Best moment ever!

Heifers on Swedes.

As well as looking through the herd we had some time indoors with some nasty weather hanging around. Michele found the recording of the sale of Atahua Legacy 26-90 in 1992, who still holds the Australasian record for highest priced bull at $155,000. We discussed additional successes throughout their career including sending one of the last few live export animals to Australia purchased by Stephen and Noeleen Branson. Atahua Alice 115-90; was the beginning of the Banquet stud and won at various shows including Melbourne Royal.

In this year’s annual sale Atahua offered 41 bulls gaining 100% clearance and an average of $7792, with Atahua 848 selling for $45,000 to Mangapapa Angus.

On Wednesday afternoon I headed off to meet Ed Sherriff of Pine Park Angus at Marton. Here I learnt more in regard to the TB (bovine terberculosis) testing side of the equation with the vet check taking place the next morning as the injection of the mild dose of TB took place three days earlier. Through this I was able to see all the cattle over two on the property with Ed being a strong believer of running the stud under commercial conditions. The area Pine Park is based only requires TB checks to take place every three years with everything over the age of two being checked. This is in comparison to areas that are high risk and everything from weaning age up has to be tested every year. The Pine Park sale this year topped at $9,000 to average $5,021 selling a total of 33 bulls.

A bull sold at the Pine Park sale earlier in the year.

Thursday afternoon I travelled to catch up with Forbes and Christine Cameron. The Cameron’s run 500 stud Angus and Salers as well as 6200 ewes on Ngaputahi Station at Ashurst. The stock are run under complete commercial conditions with their aim to have minimum input to produce maximum output on the medium to difficult hill country. Bulls sold are expected to perform under poor conditions and when sold to clients, reports back have found that they outperform other bulls when various bulls from different studs are put into the same conditions.

Friday morning was an early start drenching the spring bulls over two properties. The frosty start was worth getting up for to see the skill of the dogs working mobs off the steep faces of the hills on the way to the yards. We travelled over some incredibly steep country in the hunt to see some amazing views at the highest point on the station, catching some snow on the mountain peaks which had been the most I’ve seen in my travels thus far.

Below you'll find photos that cover Friday's events.