Page 5 - Te Mania Angus 2021 Catalogue eBook

INTRODUCTION

Dear friends and breeders,

A lot has happened in the past 9 months at Te Mania since the In those years we still got up to 360 ml a year. But it is taking a toll
October sale. We have had a very hard spring without meaningful with so much feeding out it’s been very rare for Sam and I to get
rain until New Years, the upside of this is, it has kept the pressure on away and I really want to thank Sam for his work feeding out and
the cows through mating and the engrained fertility my grandfather Livvy’s work shifting mobs even if we are unsure what exactly we
started working on years ago was like an ongoing gift for us. are shifting them onto! Up until the middle of May we had 52ml and
we are considering ourselves lucky compared to the peninsula and
Over mating we conducted an A.I trial with Xcell trying out a new Culverden which is at 32ml for the year.
protocol from the states and it looks like we are going to be very
busy in August! Embryo implants also went well with two rounds I’m sure a lot of you have been to the “what’s the beef” road show and
of implanting completed and in 3 years’ time we will hopefully have we would like to congratulate all involved for the initiative and we have
some tar ET sons to present to you. had some great feedback from people that attended. It is great to see
industry acknowledging genetics and the importance of producing
In January Sam and Aly welcomed their first son Archer to the world in
what could only be described as a hectic day. Aly’s calving ease wasn’t quality and moving away from commodity beef and we are hearing
too good, combined with a long gestation length and Sam’s birthweight of some very exciting contracts our clients are now becoming part of.
ended up with an emergency helicopter trip to Christchurch. This year In other exciting news, we are proud to be moving our recording and
it’s a no brainer to donate a bull to the Westpac Chopper, which for our EBV analysis to the Australian Angus association. It wasn’t a decision
long time buyers will know isn’t a new occasion involving Sam! we made lightly or an easy decision but we made a choice we feel
that our buyers would benefit the most from with some very exciting
3 years ago after the bull sale and the peak of the current high technology now becoming available to us to add value to your bottom
averages we were, seeing we made a conscious decision to bring line. I’m also sure Pop would have been supportive in the shift and
the average down and keep prices sustainable and affordable. This a lot of these decisions I think about what he would have done and
year we are standing by the philosophy and we will be having an compare them to choices he made during his time here.
OPENING BID of $3000. We didn’t want to let our standards drop
and it was important we maintained a high quality we can stand For indexes, we will have indexes that are made for New Zealand
behind. I feel we have achieved the quality goal and lifting numbers conditions and reflective of what is expected of a beef cow. I feel
and we are very proud to have objective measurements supporting very strongly the index development needs commercial farm input
this including the dam’s assessment. Martin Hamer and Xcell rather than a group of breeders choosing where value lies. There are
have been fantastic in kicking off our Embryo program so we are a lot of flaws in the new SRI with so much weighting on the least
maximising the best cow’s contributions. submitted and least accurate EBV and value been based on a cow
literally cycling a few days earlier a lot more than delivering a live
Over summer we had 270 two year olds in three groups so there calf but I won’t go too deeply into that as the future Is more exciting
was no shortage of mob pressure and we are pretty excited to put and includes the possibility of feed efficiency EBVs, structural EBVs
up these bulls this year 180 passing Bills structural assessment and work is currently been done researching a condition score EBV.
and the scrutiny of everyone that helped with selection on type, but
we will be making withdrawals up until sale day. They say pressure I’m very excited to catch up with everyone in June, it feels like
makes diamonds and I can guarantee there won’t be a line of bulls forever!
anywhere in the country that has had pressure like these lads and Kindest regards,
overall I’m pretty proud of what we have achieved in what I have
described to people as a tougher season than the 2015-17 drought. Will Wilding

3