Saturday, 11 June 2016 10:54

Cows need to bear and rear

Written by  Pam Tipa
John and Joss Bayly. John and Joss Bayly.

Heifers and cows which fail to bear and rear a calf at the Bay of Islands property that breeds Waitangi Angus don't get second chances.

"Heifers and any cow all the way through and later on in life – if they don't have a calf they are culled," says John Bayly. " That's the way it is, no question. Just make a policy: no calf and they don't stay."

The Waitangi Angus brand was established in 2005 by combining two long-established successful herds of Angus cattle. Today the Waitangi herd comprises 400 performance recorded breeding females and the brand is known for high quality pedigree bulls, heifers and cows.

The spectacular coastal property with about 800ha effective adjoining the Treaty grounds and Waitangi Golf Course, was originally bought off Maori in about 1837.

Joss's grandfather bought the property in an undeveloped state in 1929.

John told a farm tour, after the Beef + Lamb NZ annual meeting, that they have two sales a year – a rising 2-year-old bull sale in June and another for the yearling bulls at the end of September.

He likes to wean the calves, born in August, in early February. "We feel they settle down, get on with the job and start growing."

"We select the heifers as we go through," he says. "We cull the heifers we don't like the look of, then we take another cut on EVBs that are not good enough and then one of the final selections is done on carcase data. Anything that doesn't stand well, dry muscle.... that kind of thing... gets culled. We drop another 20 out at that time on carcase."

They end up with about 120 heifers which are put to bull and given a round of AI.

"We give them seven-eight weeks, after that we take the bull out and if they are not pregnant after that I am happy to cull them.

"We cull all the way through -- any calf that is not up to it; we have a good look at the cow and if there is a very good reason she is probably down the road too."

He believes they run their cows more commercially than many others do.

All the cattle on farm are registered apart from about 150 steers.

The calves are weighed when born then at 200, 400 and 600 days.

"We have also been scanning our cattle for a number of years – the bulls and the heifer calves. The bulls need to be scanned to generate information for our cattle sales. They are scanned in August."

He says they have bull sales because it is easier to do it all on one day and it focuses people's attention.

"Selling in the paddock can be a little difficult and awkward and takes a long time. An auction system gives everybody a crack."

With bull sales at the same time every year, people know when they are coming up and can make arrangements. Many come from south of Northland and stay at the nearby Waitangi Hotel. In the 2-year-old sales half the bulls are sold in Northland and half go south of Auckland. More and more yearlings are going south every year but most are probably sold in Northland.

Traditionally they held only 2-year-old sales but demand for yearlings kept increasing. "We are confident the bulls we are breeding can pretty much go anywhere, be used anywhere to go over either dairy or beef heifers. We are getting very good feedback."

They sell to dairy farmers but mainly farmers who are using all their bulls and then they market their beef cross calves as being by Waitangi Angus bulls. A couple of farmers up north have been doing this successfully and they get a top premium.

On the sheep side in the last five years they have run about 2200 breeding ewes and of that 300-400 are new hoggets. They used to lamb all ewes in May and it worked pretty well for four or five years. But one year he telephoned on October 1 to say they were ready for their big first draft of the season and was told to hang on because the processor was still killing old season lambs.

"So we decided that since the margins for producing these early lambs had dropped off we would go back to traditional timing," he says. They start lambing about mid-August. They are now comfortably getting 150% plus in their ewes. In their hoggets they are getting 90-100%. They are mating the hoggets at the same time as the ewes.

Joss' father planted kikuyu grass years ago and it worked well, but changing climate has created problems.

"Traditionally this place is always brown at Christmas – you knew that would happen every year," he says. "Probably about 15 years ago our weather patterns started to change and we started to get wet winters. All the fingers on the hills started to join hands and we are a kikuyu farm now. I have accepted that.

"We used to try regrassing the hills but I came to the conclusion I was wasting a lot of time, spending a lot of money going round in circles. The new grasses didn't survive and the kikuyu came back fully in three years."

The cows are very valuable in controlling it. This year was exceptional for kikuyu growth.

They usually run into feed shortages in August and September, even if it looks okay in June and July.

"The cows come out after calving, they have a reasonable amount of body condition and then they lose weight for the next month or so."

They grow some chicory crops for the lambs. He says the sheep will die on kikuyu because they can't get enough good quality feed each day to keep themselves going.

"If you have mob stocking of ewes and you put them in a paddock of kikuyu you find some of them drop off and become anaemic. Whereas we can put the cows into a paddock of kikuyu and they are quite happy. If you give them shade and water they will stay there for a long time."

The heifers are scheduled to start calving on August 1 but with the shorter gestation some are calving up to 10 days to two weeks early.

Shortening the gestation in their breeding programme is one of their objectives. They have brought their cows ahead this year by a couple of weeks and they will also calve August 1. The ewes start lambing at about the same time.

Joss' father applied a lot of fertiliser and they kept it going initially but found they were getting huge fertiliser bills every year. With the rain they applied superphosphate every year but it wasn't causing a major uplift in fertility levels.

John says they now take a more holistic approach. They now use more targeted product and put it on as needed with tractor and trailer.

Joss breeds horses for eventing, dressage and show jumping, often using international AI semen, then sells them on. "Sometimes they are more valuable than other things on the farm," John laughs.

The farm borders the beach where British troops landed to cross the country and attack Maori at Ohaeawai in 1845. He hosted some international visitors from Five Nations beef at the beach and he says every representative said to him "this is how you should be selling New Zealand".

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