Kiwi MG bull calf.

[waihou]

We think he is pretty good, but as I read in another thread, that may be a disease called Barn blindness!
He was born 4th August, a good weight-48kgs, which I think is around 105lbs, but he was his mothers 12th calf, all of them unassisted, and the first born when she was 23 months old. Note, we weigh and tag calves at birth, with mum present, so temperament is all important!

Since then, on grass and milk alone-oh and a bit of hay, he has been growing at 1.74kgs/day-is that around 3.8lbs?
He weighed 333kgs (734lbs?) the week before the show.

We decided to take him to our local agricultural show on 21st January-so on 27th December brought him in to halter train him and prepare him for a day without Mum! We accustom them to not having access to their mothers except for a drink night and morning, that way they don't get unsettled around lunchtime!

Three and a half weeks later, we took him for a day out!
He was second in his class, All breeds beef bull calf born since 1st June 2011, to a South Devon 2 months older-but his temperament was just great. He's now back with Mum full time until he gets weaned early April.
We hope he has a future-his EBV's are good too, but just thought we would like to share a breed of a different colour from Down Under!

 

[Gale Seddon]

What a lovely post! Your photos are great, that little guy is VERY handsome (esp. in that 3rd photo!!!), and I appreciate HOW you do it! Very nice. Thanks for sharing this.

 

[cmf1]

I'd say that's a fine little man you've got there. :clap: :clap:
Keep us posted on his development.

 

[hillsdown]

Nice calf !!!!

I like him

Can't wait to see him aroun 15 months of age . :tiphat:

 

[Isomade]

Very nice calf

 

[lynnmcmahan]

That's a nice looking bull.

 

[OK Jeanne]

Very, very handsome! :clap:

 

[Sean M]

He's very nice, a lot of length to him. Who's his sire?

 

[Kingfisher]

Nice. Thanks for posting that. Tell us a little about that scale your using. Thanks in advance.

 

[Dylan Biggs]

Godd looking prospect.

 

[robert]

Nice. Thanks for posting that. Tell us a little about that scale your using. Thanks in advance.

the scale is a tru test, got the exact same set up myself.

 

[waihou]

Yes the scales are Tru Test. They normally sit in the race at the yards but at calving time it's easier to take the scales to the calving paddock! We weigh by tipping the calf on its back and while its lying there, get the ear tags in and spray the navel with iodine all in one operation. They are easy enough to catch and flip over when under 24 hours old, after that they are too hard to catch!
The scales consist of load bars, an aluminium platform and the reader which is battery powered and we unplug when not in use and keep indoors, or in the farm Ute. This is the simple version where it reads the weight and you have to write it down before the animal gets off the scale! Weighs up to 2tonnes.


The sire of the calves is an NZ bred bull Torrisdale Cheyenne, by an Aussie bull Gnoleda Zac.

This is a full sister to the bull calf, she was born 26 August 2010, pictured here at weaning April 2011

and at a Show in January 2012 aged 16 months weighing 418kgs, (846kgs) and hopefully at least 2 months in calf.

and another of this sires 2011 crop, at 3 months pictured in November

 

[OK Jeanne]

Thanks for sharing! Such beautiful photos...I really like that #331. The forage looks good enough
to be in a salad..yummm!

Edit: It takes a lot of patience to get good, representative photos of any animal. It certainly is possible to take an awful photo of an outstanding animal and give the impression of a cull-quality. There's only
one chance to make a first impression. Hint: get low and shoot up.

 

[waihou]

Thanks OKJ, I agree about how easy it is to turn a good animal into rubbish with a photo taken at the wrong angle!

Our pasture is just a mixture of old grasses and weeds like plantain and yarrow plus we did drill some new ryegrass, cocksfoot and chickory into it during a drought about 8 years ago. Of course there are also a lot of pesky weeds like Californian thistle, buttercup, mayweed and ragwort which shouldn't be there-but if you spray for the bad ones you also damage the good ones-and the clover!

We don't fatten stock on anything but the pasture which is there, no crops or supplements apart from hay or silage in winter. Our rising 2 year olds are in danger of getting too fat if we don't put the heifers in calf at 14 months.
I guess we are lucky we have such a mild climate and grass grows nearly all year round, except it slows down in July/August and we sometimes get a drought in Feb/March-but no worries this year!

 

[Sean M]

He's a really nice looking bull Waihou. I assume you own him but didn't breed him? I had a look at Gnoleda in the breed book and they have another bull with much higher ebv's than Zac, have you seen any other bulls by Gnoleda or used any semen from them?

 

[Old_man_emu]

Thanks OKJ, I agree about how easy it is to turn a good animal into rubbish with a photo taken at the wrong angle!

Our pasture is just a mixture of old grasses and weeds like plantain and yarrow plus we did drill some new ryegrass, cocksfoot and chickory into it during a drought about 8 years ago. Of course there are also a lot of pesky weeds like Californian thistle, buttercup, mayweed and ragwort which shouldn't be there-but if you spray for the bad ones you also damage the good ones-and the clover!

We don't fatten stock on anything but the pasture which is there, no crops or supplements apart from hay or silage in winter. Our rising 2 year olds are in danger of getting too fat if we don't put the heifers in calf at 14 months.
I guess we are lucky we have such a mild climate and grass grows nearly all year round, except it slows down in July/August and we sometimes get a drought in Feb/March-but no worries this year!

Your patch sounds and looks much like the farm I manage in Australia.
I have trouble with heifers getting to fat but the calves seem to do a good job of keeping the cows trim. I run cows hard once I wean which usually means picking a paddock or 2 and locking the cows up over winter.
One thing I do differently to you is use a little grain based supplement to finish my steers in winter. I only do because it's cheap (less than $100 per metric tonne) and it allows me to sell my steers at a high point in the market. The steers can be on really good rye or oats but slow down to under a kilo a day in the middle of winter or they won't lay down enough fat for the butcher.
I hope you have a successful show season and keep the pictures coming!