TE MANIA SALOON BAR (map)
Angus Yearling bulls — Cattle will be yarded in paddocks on the morning of the sale for inspection from 10am. Inspections any time prior to the sale are welcomed. Please contact Will Wilding on 027 826 4015 for more information.
Dear friends and breeders,
It feels like just a few days ago we were celebrating at the June sale — we’ve blinked and it’s August with calves arriving! We’re very pleased to present this year’s line up of yearling bulls and Livi has done a great job keeping them moving forward since weaning. These are specifically selected for heifer mating with live calves, and easy calving as the minimum expectations, but there are a good number in the catalogue with data that offers a lot more.
The weather seems to be the foundation of conversation at the moment and we’re now over 1000mls for the year (we usually average 960) — this has presented challenges with animals on crop and some poor utilisation but we are already seeing the shift to the El Nino with Nor’west winds which have been rare the last two years. Fingers crossed for a warm productive spring for calving and lambing season for everyone.
We currently have our second cohort of heifers in the Vytelle GrowSafe and its great to see the social media coverage of the recent Beef & Lamb trip to North America, and how enlightened alot of people have become from that trip to the huge opportunity and gains to be had from selecting for feed efficiency. There are whispers of GrowSafe been installed at Five Star Beef so one would assume they will use the information collected to identify the most cost effective cattle for them to target and finish, so for farmers supplying to them, efficiency could be more highly considered in your breeding objectives.
Our heifer calving has started well with the AI calves by Rocky hitting the deck steadily without intervention and our ET cows are nearly finished.
At the end of July, I spent 2 days with Tom and Lucy at Te Mania Australia and as always I came home feeling more inspired and reassured that we are on the right path. Te Mania Australia’s GrowSafe units are going in at the moment and the genetic linkages between the two herds will increase both of our accuracies from these phenotypes been recorded. They are also getting some fantastic data on age at puberty in heifers using Allflex collars, which will hopefully add and lift the accuracy of the days to calving EBV which is the hardest to record and least submitted. We have also identified a couple of pretty exciting bulls for our 2023 AI programme.
I look forward to seeing everyone in October and wish everyone the best with calving and lambing between now and then.
Kindest regards,
Will Wilding