A passion for Hereford cattle began almost 35 years ago for a Towon stud master, after a childhood heart condition put him on the sidelines of community sport and in the spotlight on the family farm.
Andrew Klippel, Sugarloaf Creek Herefords, Towon, made his childhood hobby a lifestyle and now runs 120 stud females.
Mr Klippel said the family commercial Hereford cattle enterprise and his father’s mentoring fuelled his passion to succeed within the industry.
The stud breeding base began on Victorian bloodlines, sourcing females from South Boorook Hereford stud, Mortlake, Victoria, before introducing genetics from a dispersal sale at Courallie Hereford stud, near Moree, and Mawarra Hereford stud, Sale.
Stud breeders are located at the family’s property, “Gravels Plain”, because of the high exposure location compared to the main farm “Sugarloaf”.
A combination of breeding programs are being utilised at “Gravels Plain” to ensure maximum productivity is achieved.
Marketing about 35 bulls per year, 25 stud female embryos are implanted into top commercial cows per season, along with Mawarra Hereford stud bulls as both artificial insemination (AI) and natural donors and standard breeding practices for the remaining female base.
Mr Klippel said using his top stud cow family, they are joined to the best Sugarloaf bulls to keep the female base consistent.
“It’s to breed both bulls and heifers but mostly to breed females so we can keep that top female line coming through – instead of getting one good calf out of the stud breeders a year, you can get 20 or 30 calves out of that one cow, so it’s about utilising her and increasing productivity,” he said. “We pick the top stud heifers and retain about 30 replacement females a year,” he said.
Running a 300 head commercial operation along side the stud, the two enterprises follow both a spring and autumn joining. Cows are joined in September/October for a June/July calving and January for an October calving, with the 22-month-old heifers joined slightly earlier than their mothers, about two months prior.
All calves are yard weaned by about nine months-old onto rye grass and clover pastures.
Trait selection at “Sugarloaf” sheds light on the importance of productivity rather than age, with strict culling processes to determine this.
“We don’t cull for age, we focus on how they are producing,” Mr Klippel said. “We want every cow to be able to produce a sale bull and give us replacement females to maintain the quality.”