When he was 19, Andrew Quirk ran a successful smaller Hereford stud on a 236-hectare property at Garema, a soldier settlers block which has been in the Quirk family since his great grandfather began farming it.
But as things often play out, Mr Quirk came to a cross roads and decided to get out of the stud game.
Twenty-one years on and amid a successful career in local government, Mr Quirk and his wife Jessica have decided to re-start Pinnacle Poll Herefords and have done so in a major way.
The Quirks purchased the two top-priced females at the Hereford National Show and Sale in Dubbo, purchasing four heifers overall, and all from the same sire.
"It was too good an opportunity to pass up," Mr Quirk said.
"All four heifers were from Llandillo and sired by Grathlyn Pacemaker, a son of Koanui Techno.
"To be able to purchase four granddaughters of Koanui Techno to re-start our stud was something which may not happen again so we jumped at it.
"There aren't too many Koanui Techno granddaughters available so I was happy to be able to get these.
"We recently purchased a small pocket of land on the river at Forbes which we will use for our stud animals.
"We purchased the land with a view to running a very small stud, something we can do with the kids, using the best available genetics."
Mr Quirk said there were a number of reasons Pinnacle went with the Llandillo females.
"I have always liked the Hereford breed and wanted to stay with it," he said.
"I have found that Herefords tend to do well in all conditions.
"The four females we purchased have really good size and confirmation. Their volume is impressive, they are big capacity heifers.
"They are structurally sound and will be able to breed well.
"The bloodline has proven to be very fertile and productive and when you put that with how good these females look, we couldn't go past them.
"We visited Llandillo about eight weeks before the sale and we were impressed with what we saw.
"We looked at the female line of all four heifers and they were all very strong.
"Their mothers and grandmothers were all onsite, so I could see them too.
"These heifers were the first drop of calves from Grathlyn Pacemaker and when I saw the second drop, I could see the consistency through the calves was outstanding.
"That is what struck me the most with Grathlyn Pacemaker, he consistently produced good quality cattle. He is doing a really good job."
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Mr Quirk said the plan for Pinnacle was to focus on producing quality stud stock over quantity.
He expects the stud to not grow bigger than 20 breeders.
"If one day we get to 20 females, that will be about as big as we can go for the operation we have," Mr Quirk said.
"I'm not focused on numbers. I would rather have half a dozen or eight really strong females that breed consistently than 20 that don't breed consistently.
"Our main focus is to keep a good line and uniformity more than anything.
"For me that's more important than numbers."
The heifers are going to stay with Llandillo for now to continue on the show circuit.
Llandillo Julie is being aimed towards being shown at Sydney Royal Show next year with a calf at foot.
AI THE WAY TO GO FOR PINNACLE
For smaller studs, it is often not financially viable to go to a sale and purchase a quality bull.
That is definitely the case for Andrew Quirk of Pinnacle Poll Herefords.
Mr Quirk said said that for the foreseeable future, artificial insemination will be the way to go.
"We will be looking at using AI on the four heifers we just purchased in the next month or so," he said.
"This first year we will use a Llandillo bull from a different bloodline to the heifers.
"After that, I will probably look at bringing in genetics from the United States or Canada.
"Having said that, if some very good genetics in Australia or New Zealand becomes available, we would look at that."
Mr Quirk said there is a plan by artificially inseminating the heifers next month.
"It will give us a March/April drop," he said.
"This will give us yearling bulls to sell at the Dubbo sale next year.
"That is our plan - to have bulls and heifers to sell at the Dubbo national sale every year."
Mr Quirk also plans to flush the top two heifers also.
"It's more about having an insurance policy more than anything else," he said.
"If something happens to them in calving, or anything else for that matter, I don't want to lose those genetics."
