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BULLETINSPRING 2013
SILVERSTREAM CHAROLAIS
the
Fisher Family2105 Chch Akaroa RdRD2, Christchurch 7672
Ph: 03 329 0994Mob: 027 251 4791
Welcome to our spring edition of the Bulletin. This year has
flown by and it did
not seem that long ago it was our
bull sale. This year we celebrated our 25th Annual Sale and it
was a successful o
ne. Our average was down a bit on
last year but we sold more bulls to more people and welcomed a
lot of new buy
ers. Next year we will see the first
of our Hereford bulls being sold.
Shortly after the bull sale we got one of the wettest spells
ever thrown at us.
This was exacerbated by a very high
lake that should have been released when we were given the
weather warnings.
We had friends that had water lapping
at their doorsteps which they had never seen before. Fortunately
our house is s
ituated in a nice dry spot but the
water did give us a bit of grief down on the farm. We believe
the harvested fo
dder beet was our saviour during this
time. We managed to get stock out of wet paddocks into drier
areas or on trac
ks. The stock were fed harvested
fodder beet and they actually put on condition during this time.
We managed t
o get through this time extremely
well and then Anna and I left for our trip to France and Canada.
Anna has cove
red our trip in the newsletter. We
had a really great time and met some really great people on our
travels. Since
being back we have had numerous
inquiries about our genetics from the places we visited. From
this trip we deci
ded to sell the Canadian semen rights
of Evolution. This will go to auction at ‘Agribition’ on the
14th November Cana
dian time.
We finished calving a fortnight ago now so calved 240 cows over
a 7 week perio
d. The calves are doing well, the
cows are in great order and it is good to see a lot of them have
cycled already.
We have another awesome line of
60 odd Evolution calves. He is a bull that continues to amaze us
in the way he
is breeding. We believe he has taken
things to a new level here at Silverstream. After sorting the
cows into their m
ating mobs last weekend we found
that there was not one Evolution calf that wasn’t an impressive
animal.
We calved down 50 odd Hereford cows this spring and are really
pleased with t
he quality of the calves and how well
they are doing. Seeing as our Hereford herd was growing we
decided we better
get a bull for them so we purchased
‘Gay Olympus’ from the Maungahina stud in Masterton. He is a big
deep bull w
ith plenty of meat and bone on him.
We are really pleased with him and how he is going on.
We are still continuing with the fodder beet trials and have
added a couple of a
rticles to update you on what is
happening on that front. We really enjoy looking into new ways
of improving be
ef cattle efficiency and are really
pleased with the results we are getting. We believe that fodder
beet holds grea
t potential for finishing and wintering
beef cattle.Well there is no rest for the wicked. W
e have 200 hectares out for cropping that is undergoing tractor
work as we
speak and of course Christchurch Show is next week and Anna has
a team of 10
going. Fortunately she has acquired
an Aussie groom and young Rowan Sandford to help her. This year
with her sta
ff I may not be required but I
suppose you always need someone to drink the beer and handout
the pamphlets
.
Wishing you all the best over the summer months and hope to see
some of you
next week,
Kind regardsBrent & Anna and Bruce & Maureen Fis
her.
SILVERSTREAM EVOLUTION E168
13 month progeny sired by Evolution
He just keeps on
getting better!
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FLYING THE KIWI FLAG IN FRANCE AND CANADAOUR OVERSEAS CHAROLAIS
EXPERIENCE By Anna Fisher
Earlier this year I decided it was time for me to finally travel
overseas and see the world. So on July the 11th I left New Zealand
to go to my first destination Amsterdam with my best friend and her
parents. It was only a short 2 day visit and then we all went down
to Portugal where we spend 5 days in Lisbon and 3 days in Porto.
Both these cities were very old with cobbled streets and some
beautiful old architecture. There were many sites to see and things
to do. The Portuguese were very friendly and both places had a laid
back fun atmosphere. After 10 days of being a tourist I was really
happy with my experiences but felt I had seen enough old buildings
and one street started to look the same as the next so I was ready
to move on to the next part of my trip.
The main purpose of the trip was to go and look at the Charolais
cattle in France and look at new potential genetics to bring back
into N.Z. So on July 22nd I flew into Paris where I met up with a
weary Brent with very swollen feet who had just arrived from N.Z (I
had bought him some pressure socks for DVT but he had instead mixed
them up with a pair of ankle socks from the Warehouse!?). We spent
a day round Paris which was very hot and the traffic and people
were very hectic. The following day we took a train south to Dijon
where we rented a car. When you turn down a GPS and insurance
offered by the rental car company you feel regretful when you find
yourself lost driving the wrong way down a tram track an hour
later! Dijon is where we met up with Sebastian and Simon who were
to be our tour guides for the next 24 hours. Both these guys worked
for a semen company called ‘Genes Diffusion’ This Company has over
200,000 registered Charolais cows which 2,000 are classed as their
elite herd. From these Elite cows the top 70 odd bulls are selected
and put together in a bull trial unit. From this the best 15 are
selected and carry on to be in a progeny test. It gives you such
great confidence when selecting a bull as they are working with
such large numbers of cattle and have very accurate data on each
bull as a result of extensive progeny testing of their sons and
daughters.
We were very fortunate to have these two great people show us
around. Sebastian spoke excellent English and Simon wasn’t too bad
at it either which was fortunate as Brent and I only bothered to
learn ‘hello’, goodbye’ and ‘thank you’ but nevertheless we spoke
these words a lot which they really appreciated. Every farm we
visited the people were super friendly. We would sit round a table
with them and have a beer, and all we could do was say hello and
smile but we could tell they were so pleased we had come to visit
them. We also had Sebastian to interpret. Because we are in the
same industry we did not find the language barrier too much of an
issue in the field as we just used a bit of sign language to
describe types of cattle and we could talk names in pedigrees.Over
2 days we visited 5 farms. Brent and I were very impressed with the
French cattle. They had a bit of size, volume and frame without
being too coarse to look at. They were structurally very good and
had good feet and udders. The cattle we saw were in very good
condition and even saw a mob of cows whose calves averaged over
500kg. The French in recent times have concentrated on having more
functional, fertile females who calve down easily. They are also
focusing more on the polled cattle with 10% of their herd now being
polled. The French cows were truly a pleasure to see. We saw
outstanding females sired by Pinay, Suedois, Jumper, Sidney and
Magenta. The Jumper cattle were a favourite of mine. He is very old
bull who has done a tremendous job over there.
We were sad to say goodbye to Sebastian and Simon they were such
great people who we have kept in touch with since being back. We
took a quick visit to the Charolais museum in Charolles and then
continued our drive to southern France which proved to be very
fractious. We took the toll motorway and at every toll we either
managed to get into the wrong lane, not have a ticket or not have
the right payment method and on top of that everything seemed to be
at a very hectic pace. The speed limit was 130km/hr but that was
only an indication because at 140km/hr we were still in the slow
lane!
Charolais heifers seek shade on a hot day near Autun,
France.
A beautiful 18 month heifer we saw on a porperty near Autun. She
is sired by French bull Tinor.
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The French countryside was very beautiful. The country was
rolling hills with hedges and little French villages only a couple
of miles apart. In France there is virtually no cross-breeding.
Irrespective of breeds most are straightbred and when you go into
regions the cattle are all the same breed. We saw Charolais all
over central France. They were as numerous as dairy cattle in the
Waikato and in the rolling hills with the stunning landscapes they
were quite a site to see. Once we got to southern France we stayed
in Nice for a night but did catch the train Monaco for a quick look
around. This place was a real eye opener as there is so much wealth
in this country The super yachts were amazing and everyone drove
Bentleys, Ferraris, McLaren’s and Lamborghinis. There was no
Hyundai dealership there!
From France we went to New York. For those of you who have not
been you certainly need to put this on your bucket list. It is a
truly an amazing city that is so vibrant and exciting. We spent a
short two days there but managed to go to Central Park, the Museum
of Natural History, Wall Street and 9/11, go up the Empire State
Building, see Times Square, walk the High Line and see a Broadway
show. It is a place that is easy to get round, has so many famous
sites and plenty to do. For a couple of people that don’t get
excited by cities we both loved this place and can’t wait to go
back sometime but would definitely need a week there.
After we departed New York we flew into Canada where we spent 6
days travelling to different studs from Winnipeg through to
Calgary. Canada is a huge place with perhaps not the most exciting
scenery where we travelled, unless you like looking at fields of
canola and oil rigs but we really did enjoy our travels there and
the hospitality we received. Studs we visited included, HTA
Charolais, TRI-N Charolais, Pleasant Dawn Charolais,
Wilgenbusch Charolais, McTavish Charolais, Vikse Charolais,
Sparrow Farms and Harvie Ranches.
18 month heifers at Tri-N Charolais of the Nykoliation Family in
Manitoba, Canada.
The cattle in Canada perhaps didn’t have the volume, bone and
power of the French cattle but the breeders over there have to be
praised for the functionality of their cows. All these places had
such lovely females. They were very pleasing to look at as they
were sound and very feminine. The cows had superb udders and their
ability to rear a good calf was outstanding. The cattle within and
across the herds were very even. They were moderate framed cattle
with an easy doing ability. We were also lucky enough to see calves
by Silverstream Performer at Tri- N and Pleasant Dawn. We also saw
‘TRI-N Prefix’ at the Vikse’s who was the Performer son who sold
for $37,000 last year. Canada was a lot easier to navigate
ourselves round then France as everything is on a grid format and
it’s a little bit exciting when you actually go round a corner. The
size and scale of Canada is mindboggling. Most of what we saw was
cropping with no fences and no trees and the land was dead flat.
During our travels we spent a night in Regina with Helge and
Candace By. We had a really pleasant night with Helge and Candace
and they toured us around their town the following day. Regina is
where Agribition is held and it is a really beautiful town with
huge parks and a lake. As we travelled across Alberta the country
started to become more scenic and we spent our last night in Banff
in the Rocky Mountains. Before we could get home we had to fly from
Calgary to Dallas and then a 16 hour flight to Brisbane. After what
seemed like a very rushed trip all around the world it was nice to
spend time with our Aussie mates at Brisbane show.
After 32 days and 17 flights we were both really glad to be
home. It was a very rewarding trip and we loved our experiences but
we also believe in comparison to where we had been New Zealand is a
pretty amazing country too. We met so many great people on our
trip, we believe we did a good job promoting our herd and New
Zealand Charolais in both Canada and France and hopefully we will
see some of these people come to N.Z soon!
Brent in Monaco thinking beef prices will have to improve before
he can afford one of these babys!
Anna in Times Square, New York City. Half a million people cross
through this intersection every day and it costs a whopping $10,000
a day to advertise on one of it’s billboards.
Cows and calves at Sparrow Farms near Saskatchewan, Canada.
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Fox Glacier on the West Coast of the South Island would be one
of the best parts of New Zealand. It is a truly beautiful and
untouched part of the world. As you head south to Fox on the main
highway you get your fair serving of mountains, lakes, native bush
and coastline. The scenery would be some of the most unique and
breathtaking in New Zealand and even perhaps the world. On the way
down you also notice a lot of nice farming country that would have
been cleared from the bush years ago. If you look hard you can see
the farms go miles back into the big valleys. In Fox Glacier the
atmosphere is pretty relaxed and so are the people. The ‘Coasters’
are extremely friendly and love it when others visit. Wayne and
Maggie Williams have lived on the Coast all their lives and are no
exception to this.
The Williams family have been in Fox Glacier from the beginning.
Wayne’s great- grandfather was one of the first settlers in Fox in
the 1890’s. They moved in from Gillespies Beach where gold mining
took place. Wayne’s great-grandfather had a large family of 4 boys
and 5 girls. The original farm was divided between all of the boys.
One of the boys was Lawrence (Lawn), Wayne’s grandfather. Wayne’s
father ‘Reeve’ bought the farm of Lawn in the 1960’s as he had
three sisters. In 1975 Wayne left boarding school to come home and
help his father on the farm. He has pretty much been there ever
since apart from a couple of winters back in the early 80’s where
he went to Australia and worked on sugar cane properties. He also
did a small stint working as ground crew for deer hunters in
Haast.Maggie was a born and bred ‘Coaster’ as well. Her family were
sheep and beef farmers from Whataroa just north of Fox. Maggie
plays a big part in the farm and you will often find Maggie feeding
out through the winters. She is basically Wayne’s ‘right hand man’
or ‘little lady’ as Wayne refers to her. Wayne and Maggie have 4
children who are all grown up now. Johnny is the eldest and is
shearing in South Australia. Emma is currently working for Jane
Jenkins at ‘Floridale Angus’, Ben has been on a digger in the gold
mines in Kumara and is due spend a couple of months back at home.
He has also done a year working here at Silverstream. The
youngest
Laura is over in Dysart in Queensland and earlier this year gave
Wayne and Maggie their first grandchild Riley.Although Wayne and
Maggie sell some of the best Charolais cross calves around they are
actually Hereford patriots. They have an 80 strong herd of stud
horned Hereford cows which Lawn established back in the 1940’s
under the ‘Bluedale’ prefix. When Lawn retired and moved to
Rangiora he took only half the herd with him. Reeve retained the
rest and then bought some later on when his father dispersed. Reeve
established what is now ‘Glacier Herefords’. With Herefords now
being established at Silverstream we have had a close affiliation
with the William’s and their Herefords. Two years ago we started a
relationship where we took Wayne’s top two yearling bulls and took
them to the local shows for him. We would use one over our females
and then take them to ‘Beef Expo’ to be sold. The first year was a
huge success as ‘Glacier Top 367’ won the prestigious ‘Champion of
Champions’ title and went on to sell for $14,000. We have just had
our second crop of calves by Glacier bulls and they are looking
really promising. The Williams property is 580ha and including
leases covers 850ha. A couple of kilometres down ‘Cook Flat Road’
in Fox Glacier you would find the Williams property on both sides
of you. It is beautiful flat land where the grass is always green.
Overlooking the property is a spectacular site. On a clear day you
get an amazing view of Mount Cook and the Fox Glacier itself. This
site among other activities brings a lot of tourists to Fox Glacier
and Franz Josef which is only 15 minutes away.
Fox Glacier Township and the William’s property is a hive of
activity. When working in the William’s cattle yards you can hear
little squeals and talking coming from above. These are tourists in
parachutes who land on a strip that the William’s leases out to the
local skydivers. This road also takes you to Lake Matheson and
Gillespies Beach so can be very busy with campervans and tourists.
The road is also Wayne’s main stock lane.
CLIENT PROFILE: WAYNE & MAGGIE WILLIAMS
FOX GLACIER
The Williams Family. From left: Johnny, Emma, Wayne, Maggie, Ben
and Laura.
“I can sit back at the weaner sale and feel proud of my
Charolais calves”
An aerial shot of Fox Glacier and its township that Anna took
while in a parachute during her skydive.
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Between the farm and the coast is a big ‘river run’. This ‘river
run’ is 2025ha which Wayne leases with Maurice Sullivan, Pe-ter
Helford and Kevin Williams. These runs are not uncommon on the West
Coast. They belong to the Department of Conser-vation (DOC). DOC
allocates the number of cows that can be run on the block and they
have to be tagged with a particular tag to identify them. Wayne has
200 commercial cows which run out there during the winter. In total
the 4 farmers run over 500 cows on this block.
The cows are weaned in April and turned out on the run and then
mustered back in just before mating. The ‘muster’ is a big event
and usually takes a couple of weeks to complete. Wayne says the
cows tend to stick in their mobs which makes it easier in the big
sort up. The cows have to be brought over a river so they only like
to deal with small mobs of 40-60 at a time otherwise they can break
away at the crossing. The final muster is carried out in a
helicopter to get the last few out of the gorse and swamp area.
Wayne says the temperament of the cattle over the years has
improved dramatically. Wayne’s first muster was back in 1975 when
he came home as a teen-ager. Back then if the cows broke down the
river towards the river mouth you could not stop them and it would
be difficult to get them back. Wayne, Kevin, Peter and Maurice have
all worked on the temperament and it has made the job easier every
year. He also believes the way they are handled makes a difference
as nowadays they are mustered with motorbikes and helicopters and
the use of horses has been phased out.
They also don’t use dogs. Wayne hates using dogs on cows with
young calves so this helps keep the cows more settled. The job is
made easier if the river isn’t too high but after big rains like
this year the river can get high. If the river is high the calves
will swim but it is hard on the very young ones. The calves never
drown and rarely get swept down the river but if they do they can
get pretty exhausted. Wayne recalls a time when his brother was
helping in the helicopter and they tied calves to the chopper and
dropped them over in the grass on the other side to save them the
struggle of the swim across.
After the muster the cows are sorted into their mating mobs and
stay on the home farm till weaning. The 200 commercial cows consist
mainly of straight Herefords but there are a few black cows he
bought off a local farmer who converted to dairying. Of the 200
cows only 40 of the very best are put back to the Hereford bull.
Wayne doesn’t want to waste timebreeding replacement females from
unworthy cows. 30 odd heifers are mated to an Angus bull and the
rest are put to the Charolais.
Although he is a Hereford man at heart he can only see benefits
of using a Charolais terminal sire. He says ‘I love the Charolais
cross calves and while the money for them is good I won’t change’.
There is roughly 120-130 Charolais cross calves and they are sold
in the weaner fair at Whataroa in April. The William’s calves are
usually at the top end of the sale. Last year’s calves averaged
$690/hd at an average weight of 310kg. The top pen of steers made
$840/head but were weighing over 350kg. The top heifers weighing
339kg made $710. Admittedly this year’s prices were back a bit on
last year. A local farmer who is also a great client of ours, Jim
Ferguson usually picks up 90% of the Williams calves. He takes them
through and does an extremely good job of finishing them. They will
be killed before the second winter at huge carcass weights. Wayne
thinks his calves look pretty good. He says ‘I can sit back at the
weaner sale and feel proud of my Charolais calves’. Wayne use to
keep his top 10 steers and would have them killed by October.
“I love the Charolais cross calves and while the money is good
for them I won’t change”
The ‘run muster’.
The cows and calves swimming accross the river in the run
muster.
The William’s charolais calves just before the weaner fair at
Whataroa.
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Wayne takes the straight bred and Angus calves through to the
spring and sells them in November in the Haast sale. Last year
these steers average around 470kg. Young stock seem to do pretty
well on the coast. The average rainfall in Fox is around 5000mm (5
metres!) annually and the spring is when most of it falls. There
are good top soils on the property but with shingle underneath so
fortunately the property is very free draining. The winter is
relatively dry and the temperatures range between -1 and 10oC so is
a pretty easy climate on young stock. Wayne’s says they can get a
bit of a false spring and then get a heap of rain. When the rain
does start to fall and doesn’t stop the stock do get sick of it and
stop growing for a bit. Alongside the cattle the property also runs
400 Perendale ewes, 230 hinds and 100 velveting stags. The deer are
Warnham and Woburn. A Wapiti stag runs with half the red hinds and
their offspring are sold in May as weaners at about 85+kg. The
other half of the hinds run with a Warnham or Woburn stag. The
female progeny are kept for replacements while the best of the
males are kept for velveting.
Wayne believes he has been coming to Silverstream for over 10
years now to buy Charolais bulls. He doesn’t muck around and
usually gets bulls from the top end of the sale. He likes bulls
that have plenty of bone, carcass and a good thick coat. He can see
the direct result in his calves. He says’ I like to see plenty of
muscle, meat and bone in the little buggers’.
One of the William’s stags with Fox Glacier in the backdrop.
FINDING EFFICIENCY WITH FODDER BEET
An update on our trial
In our last issue we talked about fodder beet and the trial that
we were conducting with Lincoln University. The initial trial was
aimed at weaning calves early and putting the calves onto good
pasture and then fodder beet in April with the aim of being able to
have export weight cattle ready at 13-14 months.The calves have
just finished on the fodder beet crop on the 20th of October having
started in the beginning of April. To our knowledge cattle have not
been grazed on fodder beet for that length of time. They are now on
high quality pasture and are still being fed harvested sugar beet.
Amazingly after all that time on the crop they are still very keen
to eat the beet even though they have ample grass. While our aim
was to have these cattle at export weights by 13-14 months it would
seem that we will be closer to 15-16 months.We are very happy with
the results from our first attempt with fodder beet and we believe
we have identified areas for improvement. The calves on the 20th of
October averaged 410kg with the heaviest around 470kg (The calves
began in mid Feb at an average weight of 210kg). They have achieved
an average weight gain of 0.8kg per day. While that is pleasing we
would like to think we can improve this with a few changes. However
the key will be how well they do on spring pasture. I believe that
because these cattle are so well forward and that they have been
well set up in terms of their ability to consume large amounts of
feed they should achieve extremely high growth rates over the next
couple of months. This will give us a true cost benefit of the
entire project. Spring grass is the cheapest and best feed
available and over many years of recording weights in cattle we
have we have seen spectacular growth rates of stock in the spring.
The challenge is to have cattle forward enough to be able to take
advantage of it. There is a lot to cover in one article on this
subject so here are some key points that I think are important to
consider. We are intending on carrying on the trial next year to
see if we can improve on what we have learned.
Key points to consider from fodder beet calf trial
• There is no reason to fear fodder beet as long as you
introduce the animals to the crop slowly and lift the ration slowly
you won’t kill them through acidosis.• Cattle of all ages seem to
love eating fodder beet• In cattle diets the limiting factor for
growth is metabolisable energy (ME). Fodder beet has an
exceptionally high ME but is a poor source of protein. Our
observation is that to improve growth rates another protein source
that is cost effective is required.• Wastage with fodder beet is
very minimal. There is an exceptionally high utilisation from
fodder beet even during wet periods which we experienced. The
cattle will go back days later and eat what has been trampled and
left.• The ability to carry a large number of stock on a small area
and have them going forward is a huge advantage in a farming
system.• Having grass available nearby in the spring would be a
huge advantage. We believe that if we could increase the intake of
grass in their diets from the beginning of September onwards would
have had the cattle more forward and having them off the crop and
on grass from late September with the ability to still feed them
harvested fodder/sugar beet would be an advantage.• Anecdotally the
cows that had their calves weaned in February from the Banks
Peninsula properties that supplied the calves are in better
condition than their counter-parts who had their calves weaned in
April. This should improve the overall and subsequent performance
of the cows.• The quality of the calves is important. In general
the heavier calves at weaning have performed best in the trial.•
The type of calf is important. The cattle off fodder beet are a lot
further forward in terms of condition. Our observation which is yet
to be proven is that the smaller framed type animal may struggle to
get to export weights without being over fat. • Harvested fodder
beet has proven to be an exceptional and cost effective
supplementary feed for all our other stock classes. Young stock put
on feed pad situations for short periods of time when it was
extremely wet were fed harvested fodder beet and actually put on
condition over this time.
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FINDING EFFICIENCY WITH FODDER BEET
When beef is in short supply
One of the challenges for the beef industry is to supply cattle
on a year round basis and to supply cattle that are of a high
quality for the discerning markets. If we want to be properly paid
we need to supply on a consistent basis. The winter months are a
time when the meat companies struggle to procure quality beef
cattle. To try and look at ways of meeting this difficult market we
decided to run a trial finishing rising 2 steers on fodder beet as
we had a surplus of fodder beet that the rising 1 steers would not
need. The steers to be in the trial were a mob of 66 that were left
over from a previous trial unrelated to fodder beet of 130 head.
The top half of these steers were killed last season. The 66 steers
were split into two different sub trials. One mob were break fed on
the actual fodder beet crop while the other mob were behind a wire
on a feed pad situation being fed harvested sugar beet. Both mobs
received a supplement of hay.
Before the mob was split they had grown 1.17kg/day over 35 days
during the month of June. We felt that this was reasonable
performance as during this time they had gone through the
transition phase and the worst wet season our area had seen in 20
years. The issue we faced in this trial was the lack of protein in
the diet of both mobs. The fodder beet bulb has very little protein
and the hay was not providing them with their requirement. The
steers on the crop initially performed better as they were
receiving protein from the fodder beet leaf. After being overseas
for a month we came home in mid August to discover the steers on
the harvested sugar beet had not moved forward at all. We promptly
changed them to a diet of ad lib harvested sugar beet and 4kgs of
grass. The turnaround in these steers was spectacular and we killed
the first of them in early October. They averaged 1.8kg/day over
this time. While the weight gain in these cattle was pleasing what
was most impressive was the thickness and finish in the cattle.
This has reflected in the dressing out percentage. The Charolais
cross lines that have been killed have ranged from 57-58.15% and
the Angus have ranged between 54-56.1%. These results are exciting
as the industry standard is 52%. For every 1% shift in dressing
percentage of a 550kg steer is 5.5kg more carcass weight. A 52%
dressing out on a 550kg steer is 286kg of carcass while at 58% it
would be 319kg of carcass. These are some figures that are often
overlooked when cattle are sold
on a cents per kilogram basis. The steers on the crop did not
get the check like the other steers and grew at around 1.2kg/day.
The first cattle that were killed came from this line. The average
weight gain of the steers during the month of October was 2.3kg
with some steers doing over 3kg/day.
We have been into the Belfast plant on two occasions to inspect
the carcasses and see the grading of these steers. The carcasses
showed an extremely good meat colour and a very white fat. We have
also tasted the beef and were really pleased with it. What Silver
Fern Farms are doing in terms with coming up with a grading system
to guarantee a high quality eating experience is a huge step in the
right direction. The Challenge to them is to use it to take beef to
a new level. While a 25 cent premium for beef bred cattle that
qualify for their reserve grade is commendable the reality is, due
to competing land use the actual base needs to be far higher.Just
over a month ago a ‘fodder beet field day’ was held here at
Silverstream. It was really pleasing to see a number of people who
were prepared to give growing fodder beet a go. We believe there is
untapped potential with fodder beet as a winter finishing crop and
as a high quality supplementary feed. Fodder beet is quite an old
crop and has been around for years but it is not until now be are
seeing the potential of the crop. It is unfortunate that there is
little research in New Zealand on finishing beef cattle and from
what we have seen there is huge amount of work that could be done
in this area.
Harvesting the fodder beet and sugar beet.
The rising 2 steers grazing on the crop at the beginning of
October.
David Walsh from Seed Force speaking at the field day.
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BRENT & ANNA FISHER2105 CHRISTCHURCH AKAROA RDRD2,
CHRISTCHURCH 7672www.silverstreamcharolais.co.nz
SILVERSTREAM CHAROLAIS
Pute Hank H101- One of our first Hereford bulls to be on offer
next year.
Our new sire purchased from the Maungahina Stud of the McKenzie
family in Masterton.
The Hereford herd is now well established at Silverstream. This
year we successfully calved down 50 Hereford females and even
bought our very first stud sire.
Our line up of Hereford bulls for next year are looking very
promising.
DON’T FORGET OUR 1ST LOT OF HER
EFORDS
WILL BE ON OFFER AT OUR 2014 BUL
L SALE
This year we celebrated our 25th Annual Bull Sale! We had a
great crowd present. Bruce and Maureen cut a cake and we recieved a
speech of congratulations from our long time client and good friend
Peter McDougall. Thank you to all those our came that day and
supported our sale.
This year we sold 50 bulls for and average price of $5900.
The top price bull was lot 4 who sold to Pouriwai Charolais from
Gisborne for $13,000.
THANK YOU TO ALL OUR BUYERS AND UNDERBIDDERS AT
OUR 2013 BULL SALE!