UPDATED: Irelands Angus has sold a bull for a whopping $117,500, smashing the breed’s Australian auction record.
Irelands Galaxy G43 (AI) – lot two in today’s offering of 49 bulls from Irelands Angus at Wagga Wagga – was knocked down to Sam Trovatello’s Victorian stud Adameluca Angus, Kyneton.
Bidding for Galaxy – rated by Irelands as one of the best bulls they’ve bred - started at just $10,000 but took just minutes to roar into six figures.
When auctioneer Kevin Norris finally knocked it down to Adameluca for $117,500, the crowd broke into applause.
Watch the video
The result breaks the extraordinary $110,000 record set by a KO bull last August.
Galaxy was the talk of the crowd pre-sale, with many expecting it to make big dollars.
Irelands collected semen from Galaxy at 11 months with the first calves on the ground due this autumn.
“We used him in the spring with 40 cows and he has just continued to develop into a great sire,” the stud noted in the sale catalogue.
It was planning to retain a quarter share semen interest for within herd use only.
The buyer
Buyer Sam Trovatello went to the sale determined to buy Galaxy which he believes will be a powerful stud sire.
Mr Trovatello, who only started his Angus stud last year, runs about 100 stud cows.
He’d expected Galaxy might go for as much as $60,000 or $70,000 but not six figures.
“But as my father says, once you’re on the dance floor you’ve got to dance.”
Pushing him to the final figure was underbidder, James Lilburne, Australian Top Stock, Wagga Wagga, operating on behalf of an undisclosed buyer.
In all, 49 of 49 Irelands bulls sold to average $7071.
The bull
By Irelands Deltroit D2 and from Irelands Pleasure C4, Galaxy tipped the scales at 984 kilograms at 23 months with an eye muscle area of 134 square centimetres, scans of 10 and 13 at the rib and rump and an intra-muscular fat figure of 7.4 per cent.
Irelands said his dam, Pleasure – a Karoo W109 Direction Z181 daughter - was “breeding the house down”.
Her first son sold to Hicks Pastoral Cootamundra for $12,500 as a yearling and had been leased back by Irelands last autumn to use in its own herd.
Full report in next week's The Land, on sale Wednesday March 25.
