Te Mania Angus celebrates a significant genetic and brand milestone next week when we hold our 80th bull sale.
And we will mark the occasion on March 6, with 192 next-generation young sires going through the first on-property auction in the new purpose-built sale complex at Hexham, VIC.
Te Mania Angus director Tom Gubbins says this milestone is a long way from 1980 and the family’s first on-property bull sale at its Colac base, when just 43 bulls sold to a high of $19,000 and average of $3454. Although Tom says the family’s first bull sale was in 1975, as part of Pertangus – a group of breeders pioneering objective measurement as the future of the beef cattle industry.
And 1980 was also the same year the business ran its first major on-farm embryo transfer (ET) program. It would become an immediate cornerstone of the herd’s fast-tracked genetic progress.
“There have been some remarkable success stories in the more than 50 years since my parents Andrew and Mary acquired 56 females and two bulls from Te Mania New Zealand in 1971 to lay the Australian foundations of Te Mania Angus today,” Tom explains.
“Then they set about redefining the way the Australian beef cattle industry would view objective measurement, value marbling, and its goal of producing Australian Angus bulls for Australian conditions. And at the same time were also creating the revolutionary concept of Team Te Mania, a coalition of commercial herds across Australia running pure Te Mania Angus genetics in progeny testing as well as breeding and marketing programs,” he says.
“Being prepared to invest and to back their instincts, their conviction, would also set Te Mania Angus apart, and the bold decision to import VPI Lord Patriot from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute in the US (the first shipment of cattle into Australia via the Cocos Island quarantine station) would propel the stud to the cutting edge and Patriot was not just a trait leader, he would become the bedrock of the business.
“Then there were bulls such as Te Mania Kelp, the sire my father says was the first to truly bend the growth curve, confirming Te Mania Angus was on the right track towards homebred sires not just replacing the likes of the Scotch Caps, New Designs and Future Directions but surpassing them for the Australian market,” he says.
“The progeny of those North American sires would dominate our early sales, the problem was they were doing it everywhere else at the same time.
“The answer was always going to be homebred sires, with rigorous selection for outcross genetics, and that is where we have gone – a glance through the catalogue for our March sale shows a dominance of homebred sires and the best endorsement we can have for them is the number of repeat buyers as well as waves of new ones every year.”
An endorsement backed by feedlot demand for Te Mania Angus progeny and their marbling stacked carcases.
The genetic progress of Te Mania Angus has also been acknowledged by their wider industry – both Andrew and Tom Gubbins have been recipients of the prestigious Howard Yelland Beef Industry Award and were, and continue to be, sought-after speakers at global industry events.
Please join us at our 80th Bull sale when we hold our 2024 Autumn on-property bull sale on March 6.
We look forward to welcoming you at our new purpose-built bull sale complex at Merrang, Hexham VIC
