TE MANIA ANGUS BREEDING PRINCIPLES

Our aim is to produce sound, fertile cattle that have high growth rates, excellent carcase and fertility attributes. Our cattle must be able to perform for us and our clients and provide them with a premium price.

We select our breeding cattle using all the available traits, with some traits carrying more weight (influence) than others.  At present a great deal of emphasis is being placed on the carcase traits, to always improve our product for the end consumer. We have received a great deal of carcase feedback through the CRC program and Team Te Mania, which allows us to more accurately join cows to bulls with the desired carcase attributes, such as high marbling, eye muscle area and retail beef yield.

The vital fertility traits are always being monitored and improved. Our policy is that only females that produce a live calf to weaning are retained, this assists in ensuring that fertility is self correcting. We only retain heifers that are joined at 15 months. It has always been our aim to produce cattle that get in calf easily and calve down well, with good mothering to ensure a very high weaning percentage. As the old saying goes, "a dead calf has a low growth rate"!

We place great emphasis in bull fertility. Early research carried out by Dr Mike Blockey in the 1960’s proved to us that large scrotal size bulls have a positive influence on cow herd fertility.

Fertility in a cow herd is one of the most important factors in contributing to the numbers of kgs of beef per hectare therefore the scrotal size plays an important role in increasing the profitability.

Te Mania Angus has for many years placed a great deal of emphasis upon growth rate, and has seen huge advances in that area. Our push for high growth over the years provided us with another great challenge of "bending the growth curve". The deliberate manipulation of our herd to have high growth and moderate birth weight, provides us with animals that calve down easily and grow out well.

 Photo courtesy The Weekly Times