The Jade Park Angus bull that sold $100,000 worth of semen in three days

A Jade Park Angus bull is still riding high on his big pay day after $100,000 worth of its semen was sold in three days.

Stud principal Andrew McLean, Hansonville, said the bull, Jade Park Turbo, was a stand out from the get go and an unfortunate injury prior to last March's bull sale had now worked out for the better.

The September 2022-drop bull was hurt in a fight with another bull before the Jade Park sale and was pulled from the line up, despite plenty of interest in the build up.

As a solution, Mr McLean worked with Agri-Gene, to offer up 10 packages of 100 semen straws from 'Turbo' and they flew off the freezer shelves.

Ten bidders stepped up and all the packages, at a total price of $100,000, were sold in just three days, right across the country.

Mr McLean said he knew the bull was well-bred and he said it had all the data to support it.

"We used him early with AI and embryos because we backed him and then the Angus world found him through his data and then everybody wanted him," he said.

"Then he got injured and you can't sell an injured bull."

He said the bull's calves were replicas of him, proof that its genetics were strong.

"His EBVs and his genomic data indicates he sits in the top 5 per cent, sometimes 2pc, of the breed for his traits," he said.

"The accuracy and depth of genetics is amazing."

The bull's straws will again be for sale in March 2025 and any interested breeder can then have a "crack" at him then.

The sale pullout and straw sales had worked out for the better, according to Mr McLean, who was terribly fond of his superstar bull.

"It's mostly worked out in my favour because the bull still lives with me and I have a beer with him most nights," he laughed.

"He's going to have to live with me now."

The McLean family had bred the bull's mother and grandmother.

"We know his mum and his grand mum so the depth of genetics behind him is really sound and we know it a long way back," Mr McLean said.

"That's what breeds a good animal, knowing the history of bulls."

That genetics all went back to New Zealand Angus breeding and this had become Jade Park's selling point.

The stud ran 300 stud cows and 100 recipients on 405 hectares and first got into Angus cattle in 1993.

Cows calved in spring and Mr McLean had invested heavily in New Zealand genetics.

The stud owned the Australian semen rights for a number of bulls there.

"It's progressed a fair bit now," Mr McLean said.

"The easy-doing, well-structured type of bull that comes out of New Zealand is marrying up really well with the carcass and EBV driven bulls of Australia.

"I think we're making a good marriage between the two and I think it's starting to pay off."

He said the New Zealand Angus was grass-fed and this had generated a lot of support from Gippsland and the high country.

The breeding strategy was "certainly paying off" and a lot of Angus studs across Australia were taking note.

"We sold to about 20 studs this year, a stud to other studs," Mr McLean said.

"Maybe because we've made significant inroads into infusing the two worlds, we've had a lot of stud interest.

"You need to have something with a point of difference and I'd like to think a NZ infusion animal is a point of difference."