Taking care of the bull business

01-01-2010 | Hugh Stringleman

On hills overlooking beautiful Mahinepua Bay and Wainui Bay and the spectacular Cavalli Islands in the Far North, six generations of the Shepherd family have farmed sheep and cattle.

It is now home to Otengi and Waimaire Hereford studs.

Philip (fifth generation) and Shirley, son Paul and his wife, Janna, farm 512ha effective with 4800 stock units (winter), two-thirds cattle and one-third sheep, on a mix of owned and leased land. Paul's sister Louise has an interest in the Herefords and works for Ballance Agri-Nutrients as a technical sales representative and lives in Kerikeri with her husband, Chris, who is in the aviation industry.

Core business for the Shepherds is breeding Hereford bulls for beef and dairy industries, marketed through an annual late-June sale of between 60 and 70 bulls.

They also run 1300 Perendale-Romdale ewes as a management tool for about 20 small coastal blocks, most of them grazed for the non-resident landowners. Those blocks are strung out along the Wainui Loop Road and its many coves and headlands, necessitating some long walks for sheep and cows, and truck rides for young cattle and bulls.

Other land they use on lease has been planted with pines, leaving islands of grazing, one including an airstrip and fertiliser storage. Without the leased land cattle numbers would be cut in half, and sheep would disappear.

So long-term development of the herd is constrained by the leased portion of the production platform but coastal land values in the district are high, limiting any expansion through acquisition.

Paul also runs an agricultural contracting company, specialising in round-bale silage, which supplements the farm income to maintain two families.

Shirley takes care of the administrative side of the business plus off-farm accounting work for several local businesses and the local Landcare Group, as well as tourist accommodation, with the family bach on the shore at Mahinepua Beach.

As the major landowners, and for conservation reasons, Philip and Shirley are involved in the Mahinepua Radar Hill Landcare Group, www.radarhill.org.nz, dedicated to pest control in order to rebuild the kiwi population in the Mahinepua and surrounding district.

They say this environmental activity is excellent for bringing together the disparate community of residents, permanent and seasonal. Listening for kiwi calls on cold winter nights is quite a bonding activity among the local volunteers at the listening sites, Shirley jokes.

Philip has been chairman since the start of the "mainland island" project - which uses natural boundaries of sea coastline and roads around a 2000ha zone, and includes three DoC reserves - to define pest control and native bird regeneration.

Two of these reserves are mature native bush.

This is a $70,000-a-year project, half funded from various sources including BNZ, Biodiversity Fund, World Wildlife Fund, Northland Regional Council and the Far North District Council, and half from volunteer work.

The 50-plus member group employs a trapper two days a week, targeting mustelids, possums, rabbits, dogs, rats and cats. Most of the effort now goes into trapping, whereas in the early days there was more poisoning.

The results from the kiwi call monitoring this year indicate a possible 16 pairs and three single females as well as 20-plus additional males in the 2000ha zone.

The Shepherds own property contains about 50ha of fenced and regenerating native bush, plus a few unfenced stands of mature trees in paddocks. Some 80% of the paddocks now contain reticulated water, on a gravity feed from tanks to troughs, and they are working on fencing off the remaining waterways.

The Hereford breeding herd consists of 270 cows and heifers to the bull, with 230 to 240 to calve annually, half of the first-calving heifers in March and the rest of the herd in August.

The herd has been expanded from 150 cows and heifers to 270 over the past decade and the Shepherds' ambition is to reach 300 cows - but that would require more land. They are also working on improving the quality of bulls bred so that more of them can be offered as breeding bulls - the current figure is 70%.

In order to increase the performance of the herd, and lift the sale bulls, a two-year embryo transfer programme has produced 18 calves whose dam is a leading cow in the herd. Thirteen years old when she was flushed, that cow produced 26 embryos and two natural calves over the two years of birthing.

"All of her daughters have been retained in the herd and she has sisters which lasted into double figures, so longevity is proven along with quality," Paul said.

IVP International (in-vitro embryo production) and technicians Percy and Linda Sharp from ET services Ltd harvested the oocytes (eggs) and half were fertilised in the Ruakura laboratory with Te Taumata Super Star semen, from Jim and Alistair McWilliam, Gladstone, Wairarapa, and
the other half from home-bred merit sire Otengi Wisco 23.

The Sharps then came to the Shepherd farm to implant the embryos.

"The ET programme has been an expensive business but we know that the progeny will suit the conditions here," Philip said. "The IVP results have been excellent and we think the exercise would be worth repeating."

The donor cow went to Ruakura for two months and because it is an export facility she had to be thoroughly tested and cleared before travel. She was harvested four times over two weeks and after overcoming the hurdle of finding a trucking company to bring back just one cow from Waikato to the Far North, she returned home and got in calf naturally right away.

Bulls used on Otengi and Waimaire include three bought in and four home-bred. The Shepherds buy stud bulls in partnership with Brian Clements of Matapouri, near Whangarei, and have them for alternate years.

"If one that we buy in partnership with Brian doesn't work for either of us, we have only outlayed half the purchase cost," Paul said.

During a bull's year at Matapouri, semen can be collected and used in the Far North through artificial insemination.

For the Shepherds, bull breeding has two objectives - low calving weight for the dairy farming clients and high liveweight gain for the beef farmers. While they are trying to breed bulls which will deliver both objectives, realistically they have to specialise in bulls for either.

Hereford bulls are favoured in Northland because dairy farmers are keen to produce white-face heifer calves, which are strongly identified with good milk and mothering.

Demand is growing for low birth-weight bulls and ease-of-calving bulls over dairy heifers, Philip and Paul said.

However, the trend among dry-stock farmers to finish dairy bulls for beef has cut the number of potential beef farming clients for faster growing Hereford bulls, they said.

"One big asset for Northland bull breeders is that any cattle beast born here will thrive when it moves down country," Paul said. Another advantage for buyers is that bulls average about $1000 less in Northland sales compared with other more-favoured parts of the country.

"We have the growth genetics up here, but the expression of these genetics requires better feeding than we can generally achieve," Philip said.

The reputation of Northland Herefords is growing however, with seven bulls sold to studs and farms outside the province from auctions and private sales this year.

Otengi's top sale was $6800 to the Chesterman family, Koanui Polled Herefords, Havelock North, Hawke's Bay. The best price achieved in recent times was $9000.

Four Northland Hereford studs hold auctions of bulls for beef at the same time of the year (end of June) - the Clements and Shepherds before the weekend and Te Puna, Kaikohe, followed by Moana, Dargaville, after the weekend. Breeders hope that folk from down country will be enticed to the winterless north for a work/holiday trip.

The Shepherds offer around 70 bulls (half sold to beef and half to dairy farmers) in three age groups, yearling, 18-month and two-year. In the past three sales, yearling averages have been between $1168 and $1347, for the 18-month bulls $1708 and $1775, and for the two-year bulls $2694 and $2873.

About 10 of the older ones go to dairy farmers buying beef bulls for tail-end mating, which brings the average down for that class. Other studs hold a separate dairy bull auction in the spring. Dairy farmers tend to buy around $2000, whereas beef farmers will go to $3000-5000.

Paul has the Waimaire prefix which his grandfather Stan began in 1969, while Philip has the Otengi prefix which he began 35 years ago.

Another family goal is to finish all surplus stock and aim at Hereford prime beef production, towards which paddocks are more closely subdivided and renovated. Lambs are sold as stores at present. Around 10ha annually is cropped with chicory and kale to finish bulls during autumn and winter.

The main bull and silage paddocks are regrassed every five or six years to keep out kikuyu encroachment. Another aim is to have paddock sizes on the bull unit down to 1.5ha or smaller. Mulching and heavy grazing in autumn are also used to keep kikuyu down.

Calving is around 93-94% and lambing 90%, held down by a coastal zeralenone effect which defies improvement by known management methods like different breeds and teaser rams. However Androvax has lifted the lambing by 10% and will be rolled out to the whole flock when lamb prices improve. Romdale rams come from Peter Cook of Waimate North.

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