Nice looking animals... If you page through the facebook page there are some pretty spectacular females too.I know speckle park cattle have taken off in a big way in Australia but $100,000 for a cow is quite unbelievable, especially not being a dairy breed.
Speckle Park female to world-first $100,000 top at Scone
The 19 month-old Battalion Heartbreaker R16 soared to a world record high during the 7th Invitational Scone Speckle...www.theland.com.au
100,000 = 72,500 usd
CBA has ruined the cattle business...
CBA doesn't mean much up here. Buyers tell me the feeders don't like the Speckle Parks because they stay small. They get fat at a certain size and continuing to feed them is just a waste. Unlike a Simmental ( for example) that the feeder can decide to keep feeding and still make a return so it gives him a much broader time frame in which to send to slaughter. Or so they tell me.
IMO, that's more a problem with the packers and their traditional mind set than with the cattle. Any animal that will finish easily and grade well on less feed can be sold profitably as "baby beef", especially to the organic market if the grower wants to go that way. I like easy finishing cattle and have made some money on them raising custom meat for individual buyers.
I agree, and in Australia vealers make big dollars per kg compared to animals grown out and if you can speed that up it's big bonus and speckles are performing in that respect. What the dairy's are finding is the speckle crosses are growing and filling out faster and beefier than other breeds. But i do understand when businesses have a tried and tested system that is profitable why would you change. To me the speckles have to gain a section in the market, hold it and then grow from there. At the moment anything with a nut is being sold as a bull and they are going to damage the breed. Some bigger more proffessional breeders are getting involved now and i feel, at least here in Australia, there is a real opportunity to grab a share of the market.
I don't think it has anything to do with the packers. They kill fattened beef and don't give a crap what it cost the feeder to get it to that point. The feeders here don't like them because their options are limited with them.
Packers at the big plants here want a uniform size of animal. The "short,thick" ones change the body mechanics of the folks on the line just enough that the knife angle might be different, causing slow down or potential injury. Conformity and consistency are the friends of high efficiency, big number processes.
