Waimaire & Otengi Polled Hereford Stud

About

We have been breeding Polled Herefords since 1968 and the family has been farming the same property since the mid 1800's.

Story

Our farming operation is situated North of the Bay of Islands on the East coast of Northland, overlooking the Cavalli Islands and consists of 240 ha (135 ha pasture) on the home farm, and 510 ha (200 ha pasture) leased. The leased land is spread over 3 blocks. Two of these border the home farm and 300 ha of this leased land is pine forest which is used for wintering cows.

We have a total of 250 breeding cows producing breeding bulls for both Beef and Dairy farmers. We calve half of our replacement heifers at 2 years of age and the other half in the Autumn at 2 and 1/2 to produce 18 month bulls for sale. Our cows are run under strictly commercial conditions on rolling to steep hill country.
Our main breeding goal is to produce structurally sound cattle that are easy calving, have a quiet temperament, plenty of muscle and good growth rates.

We sell approximately 50 2 year bulls and 40 18 month and yearling bulls via our two on farm bull sales each year.
At our first sale in June we offer approximately 25 2 year bulls that have been bred for use in the beef industry. For this sale we aim to breed bulls with high growth EBV's and modest mature cow weight EBV's so that their progeny may be finished earlier but their daughters will not grow into big cows that can damage hill country properties in winter.
Our second sale in September has approximately 25 2 year bulls and 40 18 month and yearling bulls for sale. These bulls are bred to be used over dairy cows and or heifers. In breeding these bulls, we place a lot more emphasis on low birth weights but still aim to maintain reasonable growth rates so that the bulls progeny will be sought after in the beef industry.

In a constant effort to improve our herd we use the very best of our own bulls and also purchase bulls from throughout New Zealand.