Stock Policy
Our stock and farming policy is to maintain a healthy, self sufficient cow on hill country grazed under pressure from sheep that can produce a healthy saleable calf at weaning.
To help us breed this cow we use many tools, both practical and technological, at Mironui Station.
Firstly Breedplan. We have been recording data since the start of Ngakouka stud. We monitor all measured traits but pay particular interest to milk, as we feel this is most important to rear a better than average calf and get a head start on the rest. We believe that fats, which include rump, rib and IMF need to be in the positives. IMFs, particularly, should be high as possible as this has huge meat tenderness and flavour benefits to the steer and heifer steak eating experiences. Also we believe that the higher the fats are the softer the skin and hair type is, hence the easier doing the animal will be. The scrotal measurement is also significant as this is directly correlates to the fertility of the female. We choose this to be higher in balance with the other traits. The female is all about being in calf every year from a yearling and rearing a great calf to a competitive saleable value. With these traits emphasised in our herd we are confident that our clients will benefit from our selection.
We muscle scan our all of our yearlings every year. The data measures EMA size, rib and rump fats and IMF. By scanning all keepers and culls we get a better picture of how sires and maternal sires are performing in this area. We have made huge gains here and will continue to have the throttle down hard for continuing performance. In the 2017 breedplan data release we had only 5 yearlings of the 70 plus scanned that scanned below breed average for IMF.
In 2017 we embarked on fully DNA testing our herd females and males. We would like to be offering our clients full benefit of this technology by testing for exciting new value added selected traits discovered in future. We will have the ability now to fully guarantee the accuracy of livestock parentage and performance data accuracy will lift for clients and to pin point any positives or negatives in our breeding programme. We endeavour to bring the latest technology developed for the beef industry to our clients with a far more robust system than most competitors.
Up until three years ago we calved all our females behind a hot wire. We have now chosen to set stock at calving for a number of reasons:
We don’t have to save up huge quantities of feed.
We don’t create any pasture pugging .
We get to select replacement cows who calve in good shelter and a safe posy naturally.
We emulate nearly all commercial practices.
We don’t supplement feed them as we can’t get around the steeper paddocks to do so.
We now have the flatter paddocks where the cows used to be strip grazed producing better quality pastures for more profitable classes of stock.
Our females are culled hard and have no second chances: females born with calving difficulties, weaning poor calves, attitude when handling are all sound reasons for dismissal.
We believe that by selecting animals that are easy doing, easy handling, soft skins and structurally sound with good form and function you will inherently attract great results at now cost. Add good individual pasture and stock management practices to this and you will get fabulous results with Ngakouka cattle.
