Speckle the latest look in cattle

Charlie Matthews and Mark McKenzie see a great future for the Speckle Park cattle in New Zealand.

01-05-2010 | Not Specified

A new speckled look is causing a lot of excitement in the paddocks of Waiorongomai station, south of Featherston.

The Matthews family, sixth-generation farmers of the oldest Romney stud in New Zealand, have joined forces with the McKenzie family (from Maungahina, New Zealand's oldest Hereford stud) to import a new breed of cattle from Canada.

Speckle Park cattle were recognised as a breed in 2007, stabilised over 60 years by crossing British White Park, Shorthorn and Angus cattle in Sasketchawan, Canada.

Mark McKenzie says the black-and-white speckled, moderate-framed cattle are the most exciting development he has seen in the industry for many years.

"The Speckles are a new British-based breed offering a real alternative as far as maternal breeds for prime beef production," he says.

Speckled Park cattle are polled, are easy calving and early finishing with real carcase advantages, he says. High marbling at low fat covers is a feature of the breed which, along with the excellent muscling over the loin and hindquarter, is finding favour with butchers in Canada.

"Canadian butchers can't get enough of the carcases; they are very high yielding because of low levels of fat cover."

The top restaurants in Canada and Sydney are moving towards Speckles, he says, and this is a direction the New Zealand breeders want to go in.

Charlie Matthews says he plans in the future to be selling Speckle Park beef from the 1600ha Waiorongomai station into New Zealand's top restaurants and butcheries.

The breed has spread to the UK and Ireland as well as Australia and New Zealand, which is setting up a joint breed association and using Breedplan to record pedigree and performance information. The cows are said to be hardy enough to endure conditions ranging from -40 degrees in the Canadian winter to plus-40° of Australian heat without any production check.

The senior Matthews and McKenzie family members were first taken with the cattle at the Calgary Canadian Agribition in 2006, and in the following year Mark McKenzie was impressed by a lineup of Speckle Park steers at the same event. Learning that Speckle Park steers won the Calgary Stampede Hoof and Hook competition in 2001, 2003, 2004 and 2006 further fuelled his interest. He and Charlie decided to bring the breed to New Zealand.

Underlining their belief in and commitment to the new breed is the huge investment the two Wairarapa families have made into bringing genetics into New Zealand. Initially they imported 70 embryos from the best bloodlines they could find in Canada, Mark says. They now have 52 purebred calves on the ground, born in September 2009 at Waiorongomai. Fifty more are in-utero for the 2010 calving season and another 50 are planned for next year. They also have their second batch of crossbred calves on the ground, after inseminating 100 commercial beef cows in the Waiorongomai beef herd.

Charlie says they inseminated as many different cow breeds as they could with the Canadian semen, using Hereford, Angus, Shorthorn and dairy cross dams to enable later comparisons of growth rates and carcase composition, and he is thrilled with the results.

"They are the best crossbred calves that I have ever seen at Waiorongomai - including among our 400 homebred weaners and the 200 weaners we buy in for fattening each year," he says. "So far these cattle are exceeding our expectations."

Charlie and Mark are very much in the performance gathering mode - to prove the cattle under local conditions. Importing semen from seven bloodlines, they have inseminated 125 beef yearling heifers to prove easy calving ability and organised for 500 straws to be used in the dairy industry. Feedback from dairy farmers who used the semen last season is positive, Charlie says, with farmers remarking on the vigorous nature of the newborn calves and the excellent growth rates.

Growth rates and carcase characteristic information will be gathered from both purebred and crossbred calves with steers grown out to killable weights targeting 270kg at 16-18 months. Steers, heifers and bulls will also be scanned for EMA (eye muscle area) and IMF (intramuscular fat). Mark hopes the cattle will scan as well as a recent Friesian Speckle Park cross steer which scanned 5.3 for IMF at 17months.

Some crossbred bull calves have been left entire and run with dairy bulls to monitor their temperament. The breed is known in Canada for an easy going nature, Charlie says, and they are keen to prove it.

Three or four yearling bulls will also be entered into a semen collection facility and semen marketed to the beef and dairy industries.

The calves all colour mark over any breed, making them distinctive and easily identified in a crossbreeding situation. The purebred calves come out in four colour possibilities: white with black ears, eyes and muzzle, leopard spots, speckles and pure black.

Speckle Park New Zealand held an open day at Waiorongomai early in March and have displayed and shown the cattle at the Central Districts field days.

"We want to get the word out to farmers wondering where to go next with their cattle programme," Charlie says.

"Speckle Park cattle offer a more moderate carcase size with increased quality and yield as well as the hybrid vigour to kick growth rates along."

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