SA Angus stud makes big sale to Qld breeders

SA Angus stud Mandayen has played a major role in the expansion of a Qld herd, selling a large group of registered females.

It is only the second time the Keith-based stud, owned by Damian and Mandy Gommers, has offered up breeding females in more than a decade breeding Angus.

Mandayen was founded on top-quality females and embryos from Millah Murrah stud in NSW, as well as a few females from the Coolana dispersal sale in Vic.

Through flushing top donor cows and implanting 100-120 eggs in an annual ET program, with industry-leading sires, the herd has now grown to their target of 400 females plus heifers.

Mr Gommers said they had been considering holding their first Angus female sale in late 2025 but the dry season forced them to offload some numbers earlier than they planned.

In a good result, Elders stud stock's Michael Glasser and Ross Milne were able to put together a deal for 81 females and 28 heifers selling to Justin and Kate Boshammer, JK Cattle Company at Condamine.

"It is good to see them staying as a group and going to a stud which is going forward and building their numbers," Mr Gommers said.

The four to eight-year-old females were purchased before they calved and last month they were trucked the 1800 kilometres to their new home as cows and calves just in time for JK's AI program.

The Boshammers, who held their first bull sale three years ago, have been rapidly expanding their seedstock operation and with the purchase of a 7000-acre property at Dulacca in late 2023 were in a position to continue their growth.

This year they have joined 780 stud females, across their Angus, Brangus, Ultrablack and Wagyu programs.

Mr Boshammer said they had done their homework on the Mandayen cattle and were impressed by their pedigrees and EBVs and on inspection said they were a "fantastic group of cows".

"I had heard of Damian and he bought a share in a bull (Glenoch JK Makahu M602) which our family bred so there was already a bit of a connection," he said.

Mrs Boshammer said they were very appreciative of the Gommers family for giving them a chance to acquire Mandayen females in such significant quantities.

"It is not every day you get access to the heart of a herd. We were incredibly impressed by the constitution and performance of their cows, they are robust but maternal cows that will do a lot for our program," she said.

She said it would allow them to offer more bulls at their on-property sale in August and privately, and have the capacity for greater selection pressure in their herd.

"These cows will be able to breed us JK bulls of the quality we can stand behind," she said.

JK's buying spree this spring also included close to 100 females from Ardrossan and Reiland Angus in southern NSW.

Mr Gommers says this sale will not affect numbers at their 2025 or 2026 bull sales, especially with about 70 percent of their 2024 drop calves being bulls.

"We retained the tops in each of our age groups and retained our 130 T heifers (2022 drops) and our embryo calves as well as a large percentage of our 2023 drops, so we will build our numbers again quickly," he said.

"If we didn't sell the cows we did we would have had to stop doing ET which we didn't want to do."

Mr Milne said they were an "outstanding group of cattle" which made it easy to sell them.

"It was a pretty easy transaction through the quality of the cattle and the caliber of the people involved," he said.

"There were a lot of AI-bred calves with great pedigrees to go along with it which was a real selling point and the cows had a lot of longevity ahead of them."

Mr Gommers says the next time they expect to offer Angus females will be their inaugural female sale within the next couple of years.