Page 14 - Hereford Magazine 2021

ovid-19 changed the face of the 2020 bull selling
season for many studs around New Zealand –
Otapawa was no exception.
Otapawa Herefords was founded in 1969 by
CDonald and Marlene Robbie and is now run by
their sons and daughters-in-law, Douglas and Dara, and Stuart
and Maria.
Despite being out of lockdown by the time their original
planned sale date arrived, the Robbies stuck by their earlier
decision to only have on-farm paddock sales. Otapawa had
hosted the North Island tour buses before the World Hereford
Conference in Queenstown in March, which went on to
become known as one of New Zealand’s biggest Covid-19
clusters. Donald and Marlene attended the conference and the
southern tour that followed, while Stuart and Maria helped
and judged at the Wanaka Show part of the conference.
National lockdown followed their own self-isolation, but Otapawa’s on-farm paddock sales averaged $8300 in 2020. The
the Robbies were acutely aware of the media attention, such 2021 on-farm auction will feature a line of bulls by multi-trait
as quotes they’d had 150 people “crammed into a woolshed” leading sire TH Frontier174E.
and rumours swirling about who had caught the virus and
who hadn’t. Donald and Marlene had returned to their home
in Palmerston North, Marlene later testing positive, and the
others stayed on farm, fortunately with plenty of work to do
thanks to a pre-order of pipes for a new water scheme.
The country moved back through the lockdown levels
until finally, on June 8, life returned to some semblance of
normality at level 1.
Otapawa’s on-farm paddock sales averaged $8300, up on the
usual auction sales.
Stuart says one downside to the private sale versus auction
was trying to figure out where to slot new clients into the
buying process compared with the existing client base.
“There were a couple of possible new clients we may not
have picked up this year because they couldn’t choose what
they wanted, but they said they would return for the auction,
which will be held as normal next year.”
Otapawa has 900 calving cows including two-year-old heifers. Calving ease, high maternal ability, and longevity are strengths
“All yearling heifers are mated, stud and commercial, to within the Otapawa breeding programme.
calve as two-year-olds,” Stuart says.
“Cattle and sheep are run together and there’s no
favouritism shown to the stud herd. We calve the commercial
cows over here and the stud cows over here,” he says, waving
his arms, “on the same feed. Separate paddocks, but run under
the same management system.”
Lowering birth weights and improving calving ease has
been a new slant of Otapawa Hereford’s breeding programme
for the past two years, while making sure they maintain a core
focus of high performance. Stuart says they imported semen
from US herds that were concentrating on those traits but still
had high index bulls.
“One in particular, which will be a feature sire in our 2021
sale, is TH Frontier 174E. He was sold at the Topp Hereford
sale in North Dakota in 2018 for $130,000 (US$) to Hoffman
Herefords in Nebraska, and then out of his first draft of
progeny, his top selling son went for $115,000.
“We have a lot of Frontier yearling bulls and we noticed last Marlene and Donald Robbie on board the TSS Earnslaw on Lake
calving [2019] they were good, with low birth weights, and Wakatipu during the World Hereford Conference in Queenstown.
they’ve grown well through to weaning and yearling stage and
they look like sound, functional bulls.” with Hukaroa Herefords.
The sale will also have progeny from a Craigmore yearling “He’s more of a moderate birth weight bull but he has all
bull Donald and Marlene bought in 2018 and from Okawa the attributes we look for in our herd. He’s got a really nice
Rommel 7003, bought in 2019 for $60,000 in partnership skin on him, nice balance, excellent structure, and soundness.”

12 HEREFORD MAGAZINE Year 2021