Page 71 - 2020 NZ Hereford Magazine

On Farm

Short gestation market

niche for Shrimpton’s Hill

WORDS LIC / KATE TAYLOR PHOTOGRAPHS SUPPLIED

SHRIMPTON’S HILL HEREFORDS, in conjunction with LIC, has AI, and we agreed to a contract. With the LIC supply agreement in
chalked up one million straw sales since short gestation length place it really gave us the confidence to reinvest, and it was easy
semen lifted off in the dairy industry. for us to commit the whole herd down the SGL path.”
John and Liz McKerchar’s 1430ha South Canterbury stud 2019 will see 60 embryos MOAT – Multiple Ovulation Embryo
operation is tailored to service the dairy industry. Transplant (fresh) and TVR – Trans Vaginal Recovery (frozen))
Up to 25 bulls were used for the stud’s 2019 mating, implanted and approximately 200 females artificially inseminated.
either naturally or in its embryo transplant (ET) and artificial John says their operation still sells bulls to the beef industry
insemination (AI) programmes. Its short gestation breeding and it remains an important aspect of the business. But they
programme was established in 2001, selecting only for this saw an opening in the dairy industry with the white face calf
single trait, specifically for the dairy bull and semen markets. being so easily identified.
The couple’s decisive entrepreneurial flair means they’ve carved “We asked ourselves, ‘what does the dairy industry really
out a classic market niche within the fast-changing dairy industry. want?’ It wants days in milk.”
“To top one million straw sales is incredible; 19,000 of them With shorter gestation length (SGL) today firmly entrenched
having been sold to export markets in the past season,” John says. in the dairy industry (generally put over lower breeding worth
Until 2012, Shrimpton’s Hill had been ticking away as yet cows and later calvers in the herd), it’s estimated by LIC that
another supplier to what was an established, mature, beef more than $2.5 million in extra production was collectively
industry. But John says things changed in the early 2000s with the added to farmers’ milk dockets last spring, all courtesy of the
increasing dairy cow numbers and the phasing out of inducing. shorter gestation lengths of Shrimpton’s Hill Herefords.
“It was pretty simple for us to say, ‘well, if you’ve got a “That’s a significant number; $2.5 million of extra income in
shorter gestation bull you’ve got a greater opportunity to market the industry. We are very proud of that.”
it than a longer gestation bull’. That gave us a point of difference
we were looking for. We sourced the shortest gestation bull we WHAT NOW?
could find on Breedplan, in the Hereford world, and started John concedes big initial gains in gestation length are getting
breeding from there. incrementally thinner and harder to make as time goes on.
“To be fair we didn’t do that with our whole herd – we just added “We go to the extremes of the bell curve when we’re looking
it as a sideline... and at times there we nearly gave it away because for genetics that will enhance the SGL programme, but we’re
some years you’d sell little or no semen, and then you’d get a sale mindful of a lot of the other traits that we have to keep an eye
to the odd company and that would encourage us to keep going. on. To run our cows on the tussock country we need them to
“But inducing was forgotten about for a bit, and dairy herds be good-doing cattle, they need survivability, and we like to buy
were expanding that fast that everything was being kept, and a semen out of bulls with high scrotal circumference so they’ve
lot were being induced.” got good fertility; that’s crucial in our environment.”
In 2012, Malcolm Ellis, at the time LIC’s bull acquisition But the real Achilles heel is new bloodlines so John says
manager (nowadays LIC’s general manager New Zealand they’ve turned to Australia.
markets), gave John and Liz a call out of the blue. “We’ve imported semen from quite a few bulls from Australia
“We were just ticking away here doing an AI programme, but because their population is simply larger than ours and there’s
Malcolm encouraged us to do embryo transplants and scale up our a lot more AI done over there – we can only purchase genetics
that have been AI’d.
“So we’ve found a stud over there where everything is
measured – they concentrate on low birth weight, high growth
rate bulls, and there’s very good carcass data. Every now and
again they pop out an SGL bull so we hook into that and we’re
basically getting all those other traits for nothing.”
Shrimpton’s Hill will take two new sires a year from the leading
Australian Wirruna Polled Herefords stud for the next five years.

A PROUD HISTORY
The Shrimpton’s Hill Hereford Stud was established in 1969
by John’s parents, Hamish and Jean, with cows from the
Maungahina Trust dispersal sale. In 2020 the herd consists of

LEFT: McKerchars with LIC chairman Murray King.
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