Page 31 - 2020 NZ Hereford Magazine

Breeding a champion The Hereford Year

on the hills of Hukaroa

WORDS KATE TAYLOR
PHOTOGRAPHS KATE TAYLOR / MARIA ROBBIE

PICTURED: Dean and Lisa Hansen with two of their current home-
bred sire bulls.
HANSENS FARMS LTD,

DEAN AND LISA HANSEN were thrilled to take home the TE KAUWHATA, WAIKATO
Champion Bull trophy at the 2019 PGG Wrightson Livestock
National Show and Sale with Hukaroa Refined 1798. OWNERS: PETER AND LISA HANSEN.
The stud has another great win in its history: Hukaroa SIZE: 763ha (total over three blocks).
Defiant the 1st and Hukaroa Defiant the 5th were both CLIMATE: Summer dry/winter wet.
exhibited and sold at the 1973 National Sale. They were ALTITUDE: 160 to 400m above sea level.
Champion and Reserve Champion, selling for $5500 and RAINFALL: 1400mm.
$12,000 respectively.
“At the time that was a New Zealand record, and apparently STOCK NUMBERS:
to this date, no other Hereford stud has ever won Champion SHEEP
and Reserve Champion in the same year at the National Sale.” • 1000 Romney ewes and progeny.
Another highlight in the stud’s history is the sale of Hukaroa CATTLE
Item at the 2012 National Expo. “He was sold to Earnscleugh • REGISTERED: 200 cows, 15 two-year-old bulls, 100
Station for $28,000. It was so exciting and he was such a great yearling heifers, 90 yearling bulls.
bull,” Lisa says. “Dean was grinning and I was grinning more. I • COMMERCIAL: 152 two-year-old heifers, 150 weaner
would look at him and say, ‘it’s still going. It’s still going.’ There heifers, 80 two-year-old steers.
hadn’t been a bull make that money at the Nationals for a few
years. I was grinning at 16 then 17 and then it hit 20. By the
time it hit 26, 27, 28 I had burst into tears.” sale with Noel and Betsy Smith and Michael Bayly, who have
A highlight of 2019 was being invited to go into partnership both dispersed now, so it made sense to condense it all into one
with Otapawa Stud to buy Okawa Rommel at the Okawa day. No transport for the bulls or for our local clients from this
auction for $60,000. area who were trekking up to Ngaruawahia and then coming all
“We had heard there was a lot of interest in Rommel the way back again.”
before the sale, so joining forces would hopefully give us the Lisa says it gave them a chance for more one-on-one
chance to get hold of him. He’s a good all-round bull,” Dean conversations with clients, who also had the chance to see first-
says. “His birth weight was middle of the road; his fat figures hand the country the bulls were reared on.
were very good out of a good milking cow. He ticked all the Hansens Farms started with Dean’s parents, Peter and Glennis,
boxes and was a completely different pedigree.” and Peter’s parents, at Ardmore in South Auckland, moving to
Hukaroa’s 2020 sale will be the 14th on the farm. North Waikato in 1992. A bigger property gave them the scope to
“We were having paddock sales as well as the combined increase stud cow numbers, over time, from 80 to 200.
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