Black Simmental bull record setter wanted to 'dip into the black market'

The couple who paid what's believed to be a breed record for a black Simmental bull at the Elite Cattle Co on-property sale hadn't seen their purchase in the flesh when they decided to bid on him, but they knew what they wanted.

Victor and Hayley Sypher operate the Omega Brahman stud on their property south east of Alpha and were looking for a bull that would add size to their weaners so they could sell them earlier for the meatworks trade.

They outlaid $67,500 for Elite Uproar, who won the Urquhart Trophy for the supreme beef exhibit at the Sydney Royal Show this year, facilitated by GDL studstock representative Mark Duthie taking their bids on the phone at the Meandarra sale on September 4.

The underbidder was an online buyer from Emerald.

Speaking after the sale, Mr Sypher said they'd researched the bull's attributes online and were impressed with his eye muscle and shape.

"We're going to put him over Brahman cows, and he looked a bit heavier than other bulls we looked at," he said.

"We don't want to lose our size and bone so we decided to dip into the black market.

"He looked to have a really good temperament in the ring too."

He said they'd spoken to other people who'd bought Elite bulls for a similar purpose and they'd all had good things to say.

Elite stud co-principal Glen Waldron said Uproar would definitely serve the purpose he was bought for.

"A bull like that, with the bone and the carcase that he's got, he's going to do a hell of a job, they'll be great bullocks," he said.

Mr Waldron was still trying to catch his breath after the sale.

"That was unbelievable," he said. "I didn't expect it to go quite that well."

The previous black Simmental bull breed record was held by Woonallee Toronto T274, who sold for $55,000 in 2023.

Elite Uproar was sired by Elite Quittin' Time and from Elite Flirtin For Diamonds N111 and was labelled in the catalogue as one of the best bulls ever bred by Elite.

Mr Waldron and Kim Groner said they would have retained the bull had they not still been using his sire extensively in the herd.

They have retained his semen, along with semen from another five bulls in the sale.

Elite Uproar was 20 months at the time of sale and boasted a 145 square centimetre eye muscle area and an impressive 97 per cent morphology semen result.

He weighed 982kg, had P8 and rib fat measurements of 11 and 10 millimetres, intramuscular fat of 5.4 per cent, and a scrotal circumference of 41 centimetres.

Mr Waldron said they were proud of the semen results for the bulls they'd catalogued, saying that when they were trying to sell to people investing a lot of money, they were looking for instant results.

"If you've got bulls with good semen ready to go, I think [it] gets you more calves early in the cycle while the cows are getting joined," he said.

Thursday's sale saw all 49 bulls sold for a 100pc clearance and a sale average of $15,154.

Their 2024 sale, which they said at the time was their best result to date, also had a 100pc clearance of 48 bulls, a $36,000 top price, and an average price of $15,750.

"I guess it proves that there's a very distinct culture in the bull sales at the moment, that there's people that want to buy them at the base price of $6000 to $10,000, and then there's people that are happy to spend $20,000," Mr Waldron said.

"You can see that people are doing their homework and prepared to spend more on what they want to buy if they're only chasing that special one or two bulls."

Invited vendors, Bill and Susan Cornell of St Pauls Genetics, Henty, NSW, repeated last year's result when they sold the sale's second top-priced bull for $34,000, receiving $32,000 this year for St Pauls Valuable V416, a homozygous polled and homozygous black bull.

The bull was knocked down to Phillip Avery, TopX, Cloncurry.

He led off the yearling section of the catalogue and weighed 782kg with an eye muscle area of 130sq cm, P8 and rib fat statistics of 10 and 7mm, IMF of 4.8pc, and a scrotal circumference of 39cm.

Mr Cornell said his dam was an up and coming star in their herd and was by Bonnydale Nukara, the number one registered bull for the breed for a couple of years.

"We tend to sell all yearlings down south because they can make use of them earlier," Mr Cornell said.

John and Cathy Beitz from Middle Ridge at Amby bough three Elite bulls, paying $26,000 for two of them, while Wayne and Ingrid York, Karragarra Simmentals at Emerald, outlaid $25,000 for Elite Urban Cowboy, sired by Woonallee Missile Q476.

The first five bulls in the catalogue all sold for $22,000 or above.

Volume buyers included Meandarra's Coggan Agriculture, purchasing five bulls for an average $11,600, and Meatant Cattle, Newcombe, Augathella, who bought four bulls for an average $11,500.

Between them, Casino agents George and Fuhrmann and APL bought eight bulls for Casino clients, while George and Fuhrmann Warwick bought two for East Lynne Partnership.

• Selling agent - GDL, interfaced with StockLive