Eastern Plains Angus

Breeding Philosophy

SELF-REPLACING

Eastern Plains Angus comprises a stud Angus herd of approximately 220 females, all fully performance recorded & registered with Angus Australia since its’ inception.

Alongside our seedstock Angus herd, we run approximately 600 commercial Angus females.

Both are entirely self-replacing, so breeding our own replacement females is an important aspect of both our seedstock & commercial breeding programs. We have never introduced bought-in breeding females to either of our stud or commercial herds.

BALANCE

Our breeding program at Eastern Plains Angus aims to produce seedstock Angus bulls with a balance of growth, fertility & meat quality traits.

We deliberately breed for moderation in traits rather than extremes in the one trait.

In both our stud & commercial herds, our experience has been that selecting for balance & moderation in a range of traits is more profitable in the long term.

STRUCTURAL SOUNDNESS

We continually assess both bulls & females for structural faults whenever they're in our yards for husbandry. Animals deemed inadequate are culled from our breeding herd & sold slaughter.

Additionally, both bulls & heifers are independently assessed for structure (by Liam Cardile, LRC Livestock) at approx. 20-22 months old.

All these raw structural scores are submitted to the TransTasman Angus Cattle Evaluation (TACE) to form part of the data set for calculating structural EBV's.

TEMPERAMENT

Temperament is continually assessed in both bulls & females, whether in the paddock &/or yards.  Animals exhibiting nervous, flighty or aggressive behaviour are culled from our breeding herd & sold slaughter.

We formally score all bulls & heifers at weaning as they exit the crush. Scores are collected at weaning as calves have had minimal handling & so will express their natural variation in temperament rather than ‘learned’ behaviour.

These raw scores are submitted to TACE to be included in the calculation of Docility EBV’s.

Additionally, both bulls & heifers are independently assessed for temperament (by Liam Cardile, LRC Livestock) at approx. 20-22 months old. Though we submit these raw scores too to TACE, only the first docility score is being analysed by TACE at this stage.

HARDINESS

In an environment dominated by long winters with severe frosts, our stud Angus females have been continuously selected for fertility, low maintenance & hardiness for over 5 decades.

They run in our toughest paddocks; light soil types, stringybark scrub, rock with predominantly native pastures. We do not supplement stud females nor graze them on crop. These are deliberate selection decisions to ensure our stud females are truly tested for ‘doing ability’ & hardiness.

NB – we fed maintenance fed females the last half of 2019 due to drought conditions. 2026 will see us doing the same from mid-May until the season breaks, Spring hopefully (OMG!).

COMMERCIALLY PROVEN

For more than 50 years, year in, year out, we have routinely tested the performance of our stud genetics across our own commercial Angus herd.

We join only our own stud bred yearling Angus bulls to our self-replacing commercial herd of approx. 600 Angus females. These yearling bulls then go on to be part of our Bull Sale Team the following year as 2-year-olds. Our stud genetics are mirrored in our commercial Angus herd.

In effect we are our own largest client. We have long-term, first-hand experience of how our stud genetics perform in a commercial setting & understand the importance of functionality & genetic merit in a bull.

This practice sets us apart in the Angus seedstock industry as we’re one of just a few Angus seedstock producers who have actually used their own genetics over their own commercial females on a long-term basis.

The focus of our commercial operation is the turn-off of feeder steers at 18 months of age at approx. 500kgs to 530kgs, mostly sold into (JBS) Caroona & Riverina feedlots, destined for their mid & long fed markets. We also sell cull & surplus heifers into an MSA graded, grassfed program. Older cull cows are sold over-the-hooks to JBS Dinmore.