santa gertrudis

[Anonymous]

Hi, im thinking of starting a beef cattle heard in central victoria using my familys dairy farm to begin establishment. The milkers are fresion and im wanting to breed them with a santa gertrudis bull. My question is Is this a good choice for this area and will they cope with the victorian weather, meaning does this effect the quality of reproduction in the heard. thank you angie

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[Anonymous]

My wife and I started raising Santa Gretrudis in the spring of 2001. No complaints here. We did around 6 months of homework on the breed before buying anything then went a little crazy. To answer your question, the herd that we bought out spent the winters at the base of the catskills here in New York in a row of pine trees. At the moment we have 2+feet of snow on the ground and the temps have been around 0 forever, windchill has hit -25. We had our first calf of 2004 last Sunday at -4 degrees and she has spent a couple of nights in the house just to be on the safe side. We have some bulls out on dairy farms right now, when I asked the farmers what they were doing mixing beef with dairy he said that the shorthorn in them kept the dairy and the brahma made the size. Also, they are resistant to pinkeye and although we have seen some ringworm elsewhere we dont get it with the Gerts here, (knock on wood) http://www.santagertrudis.ws is the breeds website. We are very proud of our grand champion bull, get of sire and premier exhibitor honors at the New York State Fair this past fall, the cattle are part of the family. I hope this helps with any questions. Just keep in mind this breed gets huge.

 

[Colin Chevalley]

You shouldn't have too much trouble using SGs over Friesians. They will be OK in your area. They do well where I live 3,000 feet up in northern NSW Australia. They cross very well with Hereford and South Devon.

Best Wishes
Colin