Pardoo Cattle Company regards Team Te Mania genetics as “bulls with benefits”.
Running upwards of 650 breeders at the Barongarook West property, near Colac, the business currently uses 18 bulls for an all-natural mating program.
Bulls which have been selected for calving ease, a medium mature cow weight and temperament.
The one thing the business doesn’t worry too much about is critical marketing factors such as IMF.
While the business targets those three key traits, they know because the bulls are coming from Te Mania Angus that marbling is a given; which makes life so much easier.
With the business steer turnoff – the calves are weaned at around 280kg and up – targeting Rangers Valley they know they will grow out well and marble better than most.
Pardoo Cattle Co puts the bulls out on December 1 for a September/October spring calving and the calves already on the ground this year are in good condition.
Pardoo’s spring tends to come a little later in the season, so calving has been calibrated to aim at the second half of the spring when the flush has taken effect.
The cow herd is broken into mobs, and although normally the eldest cow mob is sold as one, after weaning (their sixth calf), and preg testing, however, for the past couple of years they haven’t done that – it is as much a market driven decision as it is numbers in the herd for the enterprise
Subject to those same market and seasonal conditions, non-replacement heifers are usually sold before each spring, and steers are either sold as weaners or backgrounded to feeder weight on contract, or a combination of both.
Crops are usually a combination of forage and cereal for grazing and Pardoo’s 600-head on-farm feedlot, in addition to the production of normal supplementary feed such as silage and hay.
- Team Mania member since 2018
- Spring calving
