Not many farmers who mate their yearling heifers can claim they have only ever had to help one R2 heifer at calving and regularly achieve a calf-marking percentage of over 100%.
Four years ago the Knights experienced a beef breeder’s worst nightmare – one of their bulls in a single-sire mating mob proved to be infertile.
Nipper was working long hours contracting so this was not noticed until the end of the mating period (eight weeks).
A replacement bull was run with the mob for a further four weeks during which time he managed to settle two-thirds of the cows.
The following year all of these late-calving cows conceived within the normal eight-week mating period.
Most farmers running breeding cows are aware of how difficult it is to bring a cow’s mating date forward, let alone achieve it with a large number. That the Knights managed it is a testament to their stockmanship.
The nickname Nipper comes from when he was young and considerably smaller than his brother.
He and his wife, Sheree, farm two blocks of land totalling 104ha on the outskirts of the small northern Manawatu town of Apiti. They have three children Taine at Massey University, Caleb and Ashleigh at high school.
The area around Apiti is high country close to the often snow-clad Ruahine Ranges and is normally characterised by long, cold winters and reliable summer rainfall, although the latter has not been the norm in recent years.
The Knights’ business includes two blocks of land 6km apart – the home block of 70ha (42ha of flat and 28ha of steep hill) and the 34ha runoff (14ha of flat, 18ha of hill and 2ha of gorge).
“Roughly a third of the area is flat, a third rolling and a third steep hill,” Nipper says.
The farm ranges in altitude between 460m and 580m.
Nipper Knight feeds out to mixed-age breeding cows.
