Page 48 - Hereford Magazine 2021

Embryo transplants

helping to build

new Hereford herd

Outram contractor Kent Duncan with his first Hereford calves, the nucleus of a Hereford stud he is fast-tracking through embryo transfer.

A complex operation with plenty of flexibility is and 100 R2 Jersey bulls. We also lease out 50 to 60 Hereford
all part of a day’s work when you’re a contractor, yearling bulls, get them back, buy some more through the year,
farmer and new Hereford breeder. and then sell about 100 R2 Hereford bulls to dairy farmers.”
It is a complex operation with plenty of flexibility to rear
Words and photos: Rob Tipa calves on contract, fatten the rest, or trade them on the
way through. Since the outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis, 700
or a young man, Kent Duncan has a lot of irons in Friesian/beef cross bull calves are reared on contract and sold
the fire. at 100kg.
He runs a busy family contracting business The only hitch with Kent’s business strategy to date is that
from Outram, on the Taieri Plain, in partnership he has to compete with other buyers at stock sales and pay
Fwith his parents. The business handles everything top prices for weaner Hereford bulls, so he has decided to fast-
from farm development and maintenance to drainage work track a plan to breed his own.
and residential earthworks, and also quarries rock and His aim is to develop a stud Hereford herd for beef
supplies gravel for road construction. The business also does production and a separate closed commercial Hereford herd
agricultural contracting, making balage and selling feed. of 150 to 200 cows to supply service bulls to the dairy industry.
Now 30, Kent grew up on a family farm at Maungatua, on “That’s the goal but it might not happen,” he says. “The
the edge of the Taieri Plain. He loves farming, his father had only way to get into developing a Hereford stud is to breed
Herefords and so he is familiar with the breed, and rearing your own.”
cattle fits in well with his contracting commitments. Established Hereford breeders are naturally reluctant to part
He went dairy farming when he left high school at 16. At with their breeding cows, so Kent says the only other option
17 he set up a calf-rearing business in his spare time that has for him was through embryo transfer.
progressively grown from 20 to 100, 200, and now up to 1200 A friend suggested he talk to Neil Sanderson, a well-
calves a year. known North Otago vet, Angus breeder, and specialist in
“There were a few Jersey herds on the Taieri and I used to embryo transfers.
pester them for calves all the time,” Kent recalls. These days he Kent put full trust in Neil’s expertise in this field and left
buys four-day-old calves from the same sellers every year, many it to him to source suitable donor cows from which to flush
of them from good dairy farms with big-framed Friesian cows. eggs and to select a suitable sire. Four donor cows were
Today the calf-rearing business he runs with his mother, one leased from Richard Martin in Nelson and sent south to
full-time farm worker, and one other calf-rearer, meshes neatly Neil’s property at Ngapara.
with a sideline supplying Jersey and Hereford service bulls to The exercise produced 16 embryos, 10 of which held this
dairy farmers throughout Otago. season.
“This year we will probably put out between 400 and 500 “We got more than 60% with all live births, good healthy
service bulls for the dairy industry,” he says. “Next year we’ll calves on the ground, so I was happy with that,” Kent says.
have 250 Jersey yearling bulls that we’ll lease out, then take “We were hoping for more heifers but unfortunately we
them back, winter them and then sell anywhere between 50 ended up getting eight bull calves out of 10 calves.”

46 HEREFORD MAGAZINE Year 2021