Hot-shot: Granite Ridge Punisher P216 of Prime Angus became one of the bulls to watch at Beef Week 2022. Owner Colin Flanagan said he’d received very good comments about the four-year-old bull including that he was the “complete product”. Punisher’s first lot of sons will be going to sale on March 31.
Photo by
Daneka Hill
After two years of COVID-19 travel restrictions, farmers were back with a vengeance for the annual Beef Week stud spectacular.
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The 2022 event marked the eighth time Maine-Anjou breeder Clint Worden has opened his stud’s front gates for Beef Week.
Mr Worden said foot traffic to his stud Maine Park “didn’t stop all day”.
“It went great,” Mr Worden said.
“We sold bulls and heifers. There was plenty of interest in our embryos, which we’ve just started doing.”
Maine Park’s admirers were mainly commercial beef producers looking to put an extra 30 to 40 meat on their nine-month-old calves by crossing to Maine-Anjou.
Mr Worden also had a couple of heifers snapped up by a Queensland buyer who rang early and bought the females before the crowd got in.
Maine Park is located at Knowsley, 10km from Heathcote, and took part in day four of Beef Week on Sunday.
Speckle Park breeder Murray Van der Drift said he’d been quite nervous about his open day — scheduled for day six on Tuesday, February 1.
“I thought this was going to be the one that bombed; it’s our fourth time so the locals had already seen it all. Our day was on a Tuesday — that wasn’t attached to a long weekend, we’re a day’s drive from most people and there aren’t many other studs around us,” Mr Van der Drift said.
“But we ended up getting 60 to 65 people through, right on par with our earlier years.”
Day six covers the Mallee area and is the smallest day on the Beef Week planner in terms of stud numbers, despite dwarfing other days for land size.
Mr Van der Drift said his stud Black Diamond Speckle Park saw a lot of interest in females.
“We had on display the females going into our Diamonds Are Forever sale and that’s were people were looking,” he said.
“A few new faces were there. They’d seen our cattle at the multi-vendor Speckle Park auction that happened in Shepparton last year. They’d bid quite profusely on our female but didn’t get it.”
Benalla fella: One farmer rapt with the Beef Week experience was Colin Flanagan, located at Warrenbayne outside Benalla.
One farmer who was rapt with the Beef Week experience was Colin Flanagan, whose farm is located at Warrenbayne, near Benalla.
His stud Prime Angus had one of the top Beef Week ‘bulls to see’ in the form of Granite Ridge Punisher P216.
“This bloke (Punisher) was the cat among the pigeons. Even when Beef Week had moved onto the Western District days I was still getting calls for his semen,” Mr Flanagan said.
“Someone rang me this morning saying ‘I’ve just been shown a picture of the Punisher’ chasing straws. People were out here all day in the paddock with him, moving him around and taking pictures on their phones. He put on a show because he’s so quiet. When I came out after to check on him, he was laying down exhausted.”
The Punisher: Well used to the circus that is public attention, Punisher ambled over to a tree and scratched himself when the Country News cameras came out.
Photo by
Daneka Hill
Punisher is a home-grown product for Mr Flanagan who used to own and run Granite Ridge Angus stud in South Australia before moving to Warrenbayne three years ago.
“We didn’t bring much livestock with us,” he said.
“We came in here, picked the eyes out of the herd and added to it. Those who knew me before say this new stud has been a real leapfrog for us.”
Mr Flanagan said Prime Angus would have seen 70 Beef Week visitors, if not more.
“I kept having to run back to the house and print more stuff out for them,” he said.
“This is our third Beef Week. We had a lot more people at this one from interstate; they came from everywhere, it amazed me. That’s probably because COVID has relaxed.”
Mr Flanagan also feels people were dropping into the stud after realising he was the one who took it over.
“I didn’t plan to get back into the stud business, but here I am. We have a lot of AI clients and previous clients who know me,” he said.
“People who know me know I breed for females. That’s the essence of this. If you focus on females, the bulls and steers will follow. I’m harsh on my females because of that. People say they’ve got a magnificent line of cows — that’s the worst thing you can say. There is always room for improvement.”
Females first: Mr Flanagan says breeding for bulls and steers can make a stud lose sight of where “the whole thing starts from”. The stud will soon offer complete parentage testing for its livestock, guaranteeing who’s the offspring of who.
Photo by
Daneka Hill
Mr Flanagan said as bulls became more and more expensive, AI was becoming increasingly important.
“It’s the easiest way to get results,” he said.
“If you’re buying these really expensive bulls, the insurance alone can be a real shocker.”
Beef Week 2022 started on January 27 in the Riverina region and ended on February 3 in Hamilton.
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