YEARLING bulls bring added value to Warrabah Station west of Kingstown.
Manager Peter Stevenson says it literally makes ‘cents’ to purchase Angus bulls from Ben Nevis stud as yearlings rather than as rising two year-olds or later.
“It might cost you as much to buy a yearling as a two year-old bull but over their lifespan we will get an extra 30 calves,” said Mr Stevenson, who has managed the property for the past five years on behalf of investors Station Agencies.
Warrabah runs 1200 breeding cows - once a Hereford based herd that is being transformed into black and black baldies - plus 300 replacement heifers running with Angus bulls at the ratio of two per 100 females.
Yearling bulls go in with the heifers and Mr Stevenson says he gets value from them straight away.
“They go hell for leather,” he said. “Of the 210 heifers calving at the moment 158 conceived in their first cycle. What the bulls miss they will get early on in the second cycle.
“After four to five weeks it is usually all over and the yearling bulls are sitting under the trees. They come out of the heifers like wrung-out greyhounds but you’ve got your new genetics a year earlier whereas that bull could have been sitting back at the stud getting fat.
“We also find bulls put in the paddock earlier tend to have more athleticism throughout their lifespan. Yearling bulls will have more cows in calf in their later years.”
Of course young bulls need care and affection after all that hard work and Mr Stevenson says they get all they need at Warrabah.
“We nearly bring them into the lounge room,” he said. “While they’re frantically working they forget about eating and they do knock themselves around. You feel for them so we look after them.
“We put them on the best possible pasture.”
At Warrabah, with its sandy granite country, improved pasture is fescue based with cattle on rotational grazing. Spent bulls go into fresh paddocks ahead of steers, for instance.
Exhausted yearling bulls are also fed on fescue silage, baled when conditions allow.
Last autumn was the hottest and driest Mr Stevenson has experienced on those western slopes but the bulls did alright. And these days the creeks are running.