Te Mania achieve six figure sum paid for by syndicate

A highly sought bull with a high pedigree has achieved six figures at Te Mania Annual Bull sale on Wednesday, the highest price paid for a bull so far in the Victorian bull selling season.

A syndicate of four studs from South Australia and NSW paid $110,000 for Lot 49, Te Mania Saville S258, a bull whose sire was Te Mania Kirby K138 and the first calf out of Te Mania Dandloo Q225.

The four studs included in the syndicate were Buringal Grazing Co, Nundle, NSW, Clunie Range Angus, Coolatai, NSW, Mandayen Angus, Keith, SA and Bongongo Angus, Coolac, NSW.

Wangaratta-based Independent Breeding & Marketing Service director Dick Whale, who was representing the syndicate at the sale said the bull will probably be held and picked up at Holbrook breeders and Clunie Range will walk the bull and serve cows in the spring.

"They will probably not need him until October so we've got that period to collect semen for them and for the other parties," he said.

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"All the other three will probably take about 300 units and Clunie Range will also take units and they're going to use the bull in their own programs too."

Mr Whale said the four studs were distanced enough from each other to not be too competitive in the selling market.

"Clunie Range send a lot of bulls to Queensland, while Bongongo are very strong in the Southern Tablelands while Mandayen in a very strong South Australian, and for these commercial fellows at Buringal it's a different ballgame for them too," he said.

The 682 kilogram, 19 month bull had estimated breeding values (EBVs) including +96 kilograms for 200-day growth, +99kg for 400-day growth and +125kg for 600-day growth.

Mr Whale said the syndicate did find the bulls EBV's important, it was not front of mind.

"He's a bull with, the phenotype and structure to go with it, and that's primarily why we purchased," Mr Whale said

"Then the figures are secondary for us, not the other way around."

Te Mania co-director Tom Gubbins said the bull would be suitable over heifers and that it gave justification to the success of the Te Mania Kirby bloodline.

The stud's work on marbling over 40 years as a factor in achieving the six-figure sum, which began .

"Those animals that have traits that make them multi-purpose are rare and that scarcity drives price," he said.

"Kirby's been an exciting development and the marbling here hasn't come all of a sudden, and it's been worked on for 40 years.

"Having raw carcass data meant improve the accuracy of EBV's quite considerably, and the better accurate those EBV's are, the more likely the progeny are going to be, the way the our estimations describes."

He said independent structural assessments over those decades also culminates in giving a good picture in a pedigree of animals and understanding phenotypes, regardless of how the bull's feet look.

Even though the price is the highest for the 2023 season so far, it fell short of last year's top of $130,000, while prices averaged $15,075, which is a drop of last year's average of $18,437, reflecting the wider cattle market.

There were three bulls who each sold for the second best price of $40,000, which were Lot 3, Te Mania Sovereign S818 (Apr), bought by a Gippsland buyer who didn't want to be identified, Lot 65, bought by Engler Enterprises, Mount Gambier, SA and Lot 89, bought by an online buyer from Backall, Qld.

Long time clients Morella Agriculture, Goondiwindi, Qld, was the biggest volume buyer of the day, buying 11 bulls totalling $178,000, twice paying to a high of $18,000.

Brian Unthank stock agent Gerard Ryan, who was buying on Morella's behalf said the buyer look for good calvers as well as structure in their bull purchasers.

"[Morella] take a keen interest in Te Mania cattle and much depends on the season on how bulls are utilised, but they generally sell to feedlots and incorporate genetics with that in mind," he said.