Stern was a highlight for its balance of performance and phenotype … the combination of paperwork (estimated breeding values) and the physical appeal to buyers. Buyers could be confident of the low birth weight, easy-calving characteristics they are buying into, he said.
Te Mania has many years of performance recording proving it can breed bulls ideal for heifer mating, producing multi-generation families with good calving ease qualities.
Those qualities there and at other studs are driving prices higher as cattle farmers move to increase herd sizes and maximise the heifer returns by mating more of them.
Another factor in the market is having irrigation means more grass on a lot of commercial farms, allowing them to take more calves to finishing, thus reducing the numbers available on the store market, McKone said.
“Other farmers are saying ‘if we can’t get the stores we want we’ll breed our own’.”
Also helping the sales is a move by dairy farmers to use beef bulls and some older farmers taking advantage of strong sheep prices to reduce ewe numbers and avoid the labour and wool price issues to run more beef.
“That’s all contributing to the stellar sales.
“We’re getting more people to them and really solid bidding.”
Angus and Hereford are performing very well as are the crosses between the two breeds though there has been more Angus to Angus mating in the last three to four years as the prime beef price strengthened.
“It used to be that as the dairy footprint got bigger, beef fell back a bit but now it’s going the other way and I think we enjoy that for a few years more,” McKone said.
