Finding the most suitable land to match high performing Te Mania genetics has been a goal of Garry and Liz’s since they first went ‘all black’ 20 years ago.
Another vision has been maintaining a strong succession plan for the family run enterprise, to ensure the land, and leading genetics they have created would be there for their children and grandchildren.
Garry and Liz call themselves quite fortunate to have achieved these goals as together with their daughter Natalie and son-in-law, Albert and youngest daughter, Kellie they now run their 2500 acre property in Furner, just north of Millicent in the Lower South East of South Australia. Kulka has relatively high rainfall, combined with sand over clay soils, and plenty of warmth in tree breaks, to make it the perfect land to run their Angus herd.
The Skeers started their Angus enterprise with Noranda and Vermont bloodlines, purchasing their first Te Mania Angus bull in the 2006 spring sale. Liz says this bull, Te Mania Modest Z854 had an immediate and impressive impact on their herd through his great growth and fertility figures. Since then, they have sourced bulls only from Te Mania Angus. Five years later, they had been talking to Hamish [McFarlane] about the concept of Team Te Mania, “on the strength of what he explained to us, and the performance of Te Mania Modest, which we were using successfully for dual joinings, we felt our herd was where it needed to be to make the Team work for us”.
They calve down 200 heifers in February/March each year through natural mating. This number has been increasing annually since becoming Team Te Mania members.
Along with their heifers, they also calf down 600 cows with the majority of steers then going to Rangers Valley near Glen Innes in northern NSW.
“We have gone straight to the source. We see Te Mania Angus as industry leaders and we know firsthand the benefits they have brought to us”.
- Team Te Mania member since 2011
- Calving period – February/March
