NEW ZEALAND-SALER CATTLE.
SALERS calves are born small, but hit the ground running and put on weight fast – perfect for Murray MacMillian’s farming operation at Mt Pisa Station.
Murray heard about the benefits of the Salers breed on a trip to the United States. The farmers he spoke to were discussing the
performance of Salers Hereford cross cows.
"They said that it was their best ’mother cow’, as they call them."
Salers are well-known for easy calving, fertility and maternal efficiency.
Murray had been putting a Hereford cross bull out over his first calving heifers at around 18 months but "wasn’t having a lot of fun".
"We had a lot of calving problems and they weren’t performing well so somebody else mentioned Salers to me so I thought I should give them a go."
He began buying bulls from stud breeder Ken Bain in Roxburgh, near Alexandra.
"As soon as we tried them they were tremendous; easy calving, no problems, with low birth weight calves that pick up and grow.
"They are the best weight gain cattle we’ve got; and the Saler calves, when they’re ready to wean, are as big as anything else."
Murray and his son Shane run Mount Pisa station, a 4691ha sheep and cattle farm near Cromwell. The property has been in the family since 1924, when the much larger run was subdivided and sold to soldiers returned from the First World War.
The station stocks 8000 merino ewes, and 200 breeding cows plus replacement heifers. The steep hill country rises up to 1370m above sea level.
The growth season on the station is from the end of October to the middle of April. Average rainfall is 508mm but in recent years it has been very dry with only 300-350mm.
Murray buys a new Salers bull every two years and puts him over 35-40 heifers. When the bull is finished with the heifers it is put out with the older cows.
"We’ve got quite a mob of Salers Hereford cross now and they are exceptionally good cows, very good little mothers."
All calves are finished on the property. After weaning, calves go into a feedlot type system.
The feedlot is made up of three yards and a concrete pad on which silage and lucerne is fed. Cattle poke their heads through a wire rope to eat.
It keeps cattle off the paddocks in winter and when growth kicks off in spring they go back out to the paddocks. "It’s pretty simple for now; we’re still working it out. Depending on what the cattle market does we might step it up to have 400-500 head of cattle in there."
Heifer calves are kept for replacements and steers are finished and sent to the works at 20 months at 500kg liveweight.
The feedlot system allows calves to get a good early start.
Usually steers would be two-and-a-half years old at those weights, but now Murray can send them off six months earlier at better weights.
"All cows are put in the feedlot but the Salers cross calves on average weigh out heaviest all the way through, and that’s against Charolais and Hereford.
"They have tremendous weight gain."
Murray finds the Saler cross easy to work with, although one of the things he’d been warned about was their ’stroppy nature’.
"I haven’t found them different to anything else. I’d prefer to work with them than some of the other breeds I’ve got here."
Cows and heifers run on the hill, except at calving when they are brought down to the flat irrigated land. He said they have no problem handling the steep hill country.
"As a user of the breed I’m just really happy, no complaints. They do what I need them to do.
