The benefits of Herefords - Robert Peacock

This is a podcast from Rover.

Okay, let's dive into the world of Herifids now.

We've got Robert Peacock with us on the program today,

who is a farmer at Orari Gorge Station and Gerald Dean

and also they've got the Orari Gorge pole Herifids stud as well.

And Robert's also president of the New Zealand Herifid Association.

I know that he was over at a big global event in the US late last year.

I think they've got the AGM coming up next week.

I'll go. Robert's lovely to have you on. How are you?

Yeah, good. Thanks, Don. Thanks for having us.

No worries at all. Tell me about the history of the stud there in Gerald Dean.

So, Orari Gorge is a family farm.

My mother's side of the family.

Her father was Charlie Trip.

He started the stud down at Nithdale Station near Gore in 1947.

So we're just one year short of our 80th year for the stud.

Through family succession, the stud moved up to Orari Gorge in its entirety in 1991.

And has been here since.

So we're now running...

Well, the farm in general, about 25,000 stock units,

sort of 50% sheep, 25% cattle, 25% deer, just roughly,

but sort of slowly reducing the deer.

The sheep slightly trying to get more of a 40, 30, 30 type of split.

So about 650 cows, they're all perifit cows.

They're mostly recorded on breed plan through the perifit association.

We've identified a bee mob.

So we use a terminal sire on about 100 of the lesser cows.

So it was about 550 sort of recorded going to the perifit bullet each year.

And we use a lot of...

Use the terminal sire second cycle as well, getting very good scanning results,

but 83% in calf, the first cycle.

So let's just use the terminal sire for those second cycle girls

and get the hybrid figure benefit.

Yeah, well, it seems like things are going bloody well then,

but also you are with the...

As I said, the New Zealand Herifit Association is well in fact president.

How long have you been involved with the association for Robert?

So I've been on the board for about nine years now.

I was on the technical committee as a sort of a non board member before that.

And yeah, they co-opted me on to the main board in about 2017.

And then I've been president for just short of two years.

And that took you obviously to the World Herifit Conference in Kansas

in the States last year.

What was the general tenor of that conference?

Yeah, as you can imagine with beef prices,

it was pretty buoyant sort of atmosphere.

But yeah, the Herifit sort of news in general,

a lot about the fertility and the feed efficiency advantage

that Herifit genetically appear to have.

So American, as you can imagine, they do everything pretty big.

The research facilities are sort of the envy of the world.

The main research center, the Clay Center, has 8,000 research cows on 35,000 acres.

And some of the best beef mines in the world.

So doing a lot of research there.

Yeah, so they found the genetics.

At a genetic level, the Herifits are superior to most breeds in that fertility and efficiency.

And they're the two biggest profit drivers.

So that's great.

So if you're in a pure Herifit system or a cross breeding program,

the Herifits are a key component of that for profit.

Yeah, also just the general power of hybrid vigor was also a big topic.

Not just the terminal SAR effect, which might get between 8 and 12, maybe 14%,

increase in growth from hybrid vigor, but the maternal traits.

So hybrid vigor seems to lift the lowly heritable traits the most, which is pretty handy.

So your fertility, your longevity, your survival, stuff like that,

is hugely increased by hybrid vigor.

And that's why everyone knows that your black white face cow is always the best cow out there.

And they've done the figures and that cow will produce 25% more calf-weaning weight over her lifetime

than a purebred cow.

So yeah, I mean, we all, a lot of us had pure Herifits back in the 80s.

There was a swing.

So through the 90s to Angus, worldwide, due to the Angus premiums,

which rose mainly from the certified Angus beef program in America.

And as well as creating a black calf for that market,

they also got the benefit of hybrid vigor,

whereas now 30, 40 years later, there's a lot of herds are reasonably pure Angus.

And they're finding when they go back to the Herifit,

they're getting that hybrid vigor back again.

And they're also still eligible for any premiums because they've got a black coat.

Interesting. Yeah, just actually on the Angus issue there.

So the president's message in the 2025 Herifit magazine,

you were concerned that the alliance marbling premiums were labeled as an Angus premium,

even though all breeds qualify for the premium.

Can you talk to that?

Yes. And we've clarified that with alliance.

So hopefully they're happy with what I'm sort of saying.

They do have an Angus premium.

If you're a marble school one and you hit other criteria,

you get 20 cents and it goes up through the marble schools.

But that's quite a small part of their operation.

They only kill those lines on one day per week.

So you've got to have everything lined up.

You've got to have the paperwork saying they're Angus and things.

But they've also got the hand-picked range, which everyone knows about.

And that's got exactly the same premiums.

And that's available for all breeds,

whether it's a crossbred or a purebred Herifit Cementile doesn't matter.

If you've got a line of Herifits and a line of Angus,

and they both have the same quality with marbling and fat colour and everything,

they will both get exactly the same premiums.

So it's sort of a little bit misleading.

I don't think it's intentional,

but there is premiums out there.

And this is something we have been battling for a while as Herifit breeders.

It's these perceived premiums,

which don't really exist when you actually get to the final stage of killing them.

Silver ferns also have a similar system.

They have an Angus premium.

It's not very large, but just for being black.

But again, if you go down the beef EQ line,

all breeds qualify for premiums if they're hit the certain quality criteria.

And most other breed,

most other processes don't have any premiums for any breeds.

So really, there's no reason why you should be favouring any one breed for premiums.

It's quality that counts, the marbling breeding value,

which all breeds have as part of their EBV suite.

You select for that,

then you're going to open yourself up to the opportunity of quality premiums.

So it's kind of been tidied up now as far as you're concerned?

Yeah, I think so.

It's just okay to have the education,

making sure commercial guides realise that,

and also the calf buyers,

yeah, they realise.

And I think the last couple of years,

between Heriford Angus,

there's really leveled out.

There was no doubt you did use to get a bit of a premium for black calves over red calves.

But last year, the bulk of calf sales,

Heriford pure Heriford were the same as pure Angus.

And the Heriford Angus cross in my sales were getting a premium

because people were spotting that hybrid figure,

that they're going to keep getting that extra growth.

Yeah.

There was recently, as well,

there was a field day at the Reeves family stud,

I believe, called Power of the Beef Cow.

When was that? What was that about?

Yeah, so that was just last week.

The Reeves farm up in East Coast,

and their Gisborne.

And as well as having Heriford stud,

they've got quite a large commercial operation

and do quite a bit of cross breeding.

So they had the facts and figures of a commercial scale

of the benefits of the hybrid figure they've been getting

by crossing the Heriford and Angus.

And like I said, it's powerful stuff that hybrid figure.

You don't have to be spending a fortune.

You just go and buy a different bull.

It doesn't have to be a more expensive bull.

It works both ways,

whichever way you're doing it.

Yeah, getting much better production,

much better fertility,

much better weaning weights,

through that hybrid figure.

Talk to me about the Heriford prime sort of brand

and what's happening in that space at the moment.

Yeah, so the Heriford prime is a prime brand

that's owned by the New Zealand Heriford Association.

It's actually the longest lasting beef brand in New Zealand,

I believe, started way back in the 90s,

and it's still going.

It's difficult in these times when beef is expensive,

trying to extract a premium.

The Heriford prime board have been working hard.

On that, we've had a long association with McGill's

in the North Ireland,

and they're in the process of expanding their production,

trying to potentially triple their output.

So they're going to be looking flat out for more Heriford

and Heriford cross cattle to put through there.

And also, in the South Island,

we've just been lacking a sort of a partner down here

and the last sort of six months or so,

we've been working with Harris Farms.

And yep, they're on board.

They've done some trials.

They're loving the product.

And yeah, they're keen to work with us

and put more Heriford through their plant and cheviate.

Interesting. They've got some good products, don't they?

Harris Farms.

They do. Yes, they're through a lot of supermarkets

and other outlets through the South Island

and even a bit into the North Island, I think.

Again, they've been increasing production.

You're very well known for the full variety of products,

not just the steaks, but yeah, the sausages are good

and everything in between.

Yeah, I'm a regular buyer of their stuff, actually.

So in terms of there was a pan-Pacific trial,

as well, while we're on the kind of, you know,

I'm talking about Heriford's in a wider sense.

Talk to me about the recent pan-Pacific trial,

I think, for genetic evaluation of Heriford's

across a number of countries, obviously.

Yeah, so most breeds in New Zealand

have their genetic evaluation done by breed plan in Australia.

Heriford's are no different.

We have a trans-Tasman evaluation.

So all the Australian Herifords and New Zealand Herifords

are in the same genetic pool and go through that evaluation.

It's always just been a bit tricky

when you're trying to import a stud bull from America,

trying to sort of compare the breeding values

and things because they're on a different system.

So last year, through Dan and Dorian Garrick at Helical,

that run the American evaluation,

they merged our data and did a trial there,

and then ran correlations to see how accurate the data was

and how much it changed between the two systems

and getting some pretty good results.

So who knows, that might be something that we look at in the future.

It might just be once a year for stud breeders

to compare breeding values,

but there's a lot of options out there

with where we can get stuff done.

But I think the great thing about that trial

was when he was sort of doing his research into the data,

the strength of the recording by the New Zealand breeders

came out very strong.

A lot of DNA testing, a lot of good phenotypic recording,

weighing and stuff,

because you can't create breeding values

unless you've got a lot of data behind them

and that data's got to be accurate.

And so it was great to see the New Zealand breeders

have been doing a really good job there.

Yeah, well done, New Zealand breeders, good job.

And so also as well, I think New Zealand Herifids has moved

its registry as well in recent-ish times.

Yeah, so still in the process of doing so,

most like a lot of breeds,

we were with ABRI in Australia for our registry.

So when I say registry,

that's where we store all the pedigrees,

all the raw data,

and then once a month all that data's exported

to breed plan to do the evaluation.

And so we've been looking for a while

and last year made the move to Helical.

So that's a New Zealand owned company

by Dan and Dorian Garrett in the North Island.

Yeah, very forward thinking,

very easy to work with.

You can sort of bounce ideas off them.

Nothing seems to be a problem.

I think it's going to be much better for breeders

to access their data

and be able to do more with their data.

We're going to be able to merge different traits

so we can still use the breed plan evaluation

for most of our traits,

but there might be a trait

that breed plan doesn't offer.

We can get that run by someone else

and then merge the two onto the one viewing platform

for people to see.

Interesting, yeah.

Yeah, that's obviously,

you know, again,

you're not sitting still,

you're clearly making things happen

and there's the AGM coming up next week.

Are there places about to sort of pop up as well?

Yes, yeah, we've just had elections for board members.

So that's great.

We had a few people put their hands up

and we've had a couple of long serving board members stand down.

So, you know, just like to mention them,

Colin Cornie and Gray Panett

put probably nearly 15 years each into the breed,

which has been great.

It's all voluntary stuff a lot of time,

just trying to help other breeders out by being on that board.

So they've stepped down

and we've got actually four new faces

two North Islanders and two South Islanders have come on.

Take us up to our full capacity of nine.

So that's great.

We're really looking forward to working with those guys.

I think we've got a really strong board,

good cross section of different people

that think differently,

which is important on a board.

And yeah, looking forward to it.

Now, in terms of the next generation as well,

I think there's an event coming up next month,

potentially the youth development forum.

Yes, we're pretty proud of our youth development setup.

It's the envy of a lot of other breeds.

We had a team went to the World Heritage Conference,

so four sort of people in their early 20s

went to represent New Zealand in a competition there.

The youth thing you're referring to in Goore

is something we've been running most years.

We've got your 25 young people

who put the hand up registered for that.

So that was basically the maximum we could take,

which is great.

So sold out.

And I'd really like to thanks the like of Dan and his team

at Bo Ringo Ringelheim as prime responses of that youth program.

They're very passionate about it

and just couldn't do it without them.

Really, they were great helping the team go to America

and they're great with the general youth setup.

Now current issues as well that are happening,

of course, obviously prices are pretty good

for the products that are being produced around the country

at the moment, which is really good.

And then we've got the flip side, of course,

of international situations,

which we can't really do much of,

how are you or do much about?

What's the, what's the,

the overall kind of landscape out there at the moment?

I think sort of politics aside,

I think the beef increased to me,

the only surprise with the beef rise last year

was how long it took to get here.

And the beef had been sky high in America for several years

before I'd flew to our processes

and there'll be different reasons why that took so long.

But I think the great thing about this rises,

I mean, most commodities follow cycles

and those cycles often have a reasonably consistent time length.

So the beef cycle is about every eight years between peaks.

This one looks like it should be significantly longer.

The supply and demand have got seriously out of kilter,

mainly due to things like droughts in America there.

Cowherd is less now than it was 50 years ago.

It's really low in that time,

the population of meat eaters has doubled.

So yeah, for quite some time,

I think there's going to be sort of a strong demand for red meat

across the globe, which is really exciting.

So yeah, farm is over here.

I think they can make investments on farm

and with their genetics,

sort of with confidence that they're going to get a payback for several years.

Obviously other things do affect it.

Yes, what's happening in the Middle East is going to be a bit of a concern.

So if it's going to push costs up and even limit supply of fuel and stuff.

But in terms of actual beef supply and demand,

it's looking strong for quite a while.

You say the number of meat eaters has doubled.

And where globally or just in America?

Well, I mean, the population in the world in general and certainly in America,

like in the last 50 years,

I mean, 100 years ago, we didn't have, well, not, well, probably 130 years ago,

we had a billion people in the world.

Yeah.

And we're now eight or nine billion people.

Yeah, there you go.

And as much as, yes, some of them can't afford meat.

And there are some, obviously, some vegetarians out there.

But yeah, 10% of,

if 10% of the world of vegetarians,

that's 10% of eight billion.

There's still seven billion others that are eating it compared to one billion a hundred years ago.

Yeah, so the demand is there.

Things like the Impossible Burger seem to have been a bit of a flash in the pan.

There's sort of, there's a lot of fake meat companies that have gone broke the last few years.

Yeah, people crave protein.

And it's kind of a case of finding out what proteins they can have.

And there's more people become middle class and can start to afford red meat.

That's all good for the cattle farmers.

Yeah, it certainly is, especially with their grass-fed stuff as well.

Actually, when you're in the States, because they obviously,

grass-fed isn't as much of a thing over there, right?

Obviously.

And, you know, the pallet of the average American isn't quite the same as ours,

because they just grown up on more grain-fed stuff.

So, well, I'm sure you tried some over there.

What did you think?

Yeah, no, it's interesting.

I mean, we do rave about the grass-fed system here.

But we do need to be careful what we're competing against.

And the vast proportion of meat eaters are commodity-based.

They want quality.

You do surveys, and they say they buy free range, they buy organic and stuff.

But when they actually go into the supermarket, they generally buy on price.

Yeah.

So, if you're going to have a grass-fed story,

you've also got to have a quality story around it.

You've got to have that marbling, and you can see that in the States.

You're going to look in the supermarket,

and you've got grain-fed, or don't like grain-fed.

But you can see it's marbled.

You see grass-fed.

And I saw it went to butcher shops and supermarkets,

as well as restaurants while I was there, just at a curiosity.

And there was grass-fed beef for twice the price of, no, it wasn't.

It was actually cheaper than the grain-fed.

And the reason being was there was no marbling in it.

Right.

Yeah.

So, if you're going to do grass-fed, it's got to be good quality grass.

It's got to have the genetics behind it, so it can still marble.

Or as the grain does hide a lot of other things.

And, yeah, so you've got to have both,

and then you can start getting a premium.

But most people, they want to go and buy a steak,

and they want to taste the same as the last one,

because the last one was great.

And with grass-fed, there's a risk that it won't.

You can have a good steak, and you can have a bad steak.

Yeah.

I'm not that keen on the grain-fed steaks personally,

but they are consistent.

And when you've had a really good grass-fed, well-marbled steak,

there's nothing beats it.

But not many people have that luxury, as we do on the farm.

We do our own homekill.

And we put a lot of effort into the genetics, and they marble well.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Might have to come around to your place for dinner by the sounds.

So you've got some, when are sales?

Yeah.

So the two-year-old sales will start towards the end of May.

I think about the 22nd of May,

it's about the first horrific sale,

and they go right through to the towards the end of June.

Might be one or two, just at the beginning of July.

So yeah, last year, both our two-year-old sales in June

and our yearling sales in the spring were both very buoyant,

like all breeds were.

But I think it wasn't just the beef price

that was pushing the Heriford sales up.

I think there's definitely a few sort of guys with Angus Chaos

that are sort of seeing the light of hybrid vigor

and coming back to Herifords.

So yeah, trying to increase Heriford production,

I think, is looking promising, hopefully.

There's more people cotton onto that.

Yeah, I think the genetic progress of the Heriford breed in general,

like most breeders, has been outstanding

for the last 10 or 20 years.

And any edge of trying to pass that on

to the commercial guys to increase their profit.

Just to finish up on here, Robert,

and to appreciate your time,

just on the sheep side of things.

Do you have a ram set of sale as well, do you?

We do private sales.

So yeah, we've got a Romney and a Romney Texel maternal studs

and we've got our own terminal stud as well.

So you sell rams privately, sort of through November, December.

And we have a big lamb sale in January.

It just works for our system to offload a lot of lambs then

so we can wean forms off the hill

and we can finish them on the flat where we used to finish the lambs.

Yeah, because I think as well,

you advertise your store lambs with the dreamtest results, don't you?

Yes, yeah, I mean,

I mean, people need to sort of be careful about drench resistance.

And, but also they, a lot of farmers,

they need to realize there shouldn't be a stigma about drench resistance.

Like nearly half the farmers in the country have it.

You're not the only one if you do have some issues.

You need to talk to your vets and you can work your way through it.

The Wormwise program by B for Lamb is very helpful.

But yeah, I mean, we're sort of through careful use of drenches

and we've always put a lot of effort into selecting genetics

for resistance to worms.

And because of that means we can use less drenches.

And every time you use a chemical,

doesn't matter if it's a drench or a roundup or an antibiotic in hospital,

every time you use it, something's got a chance of getting resistance to it.

So because we haven't used our drenches, they still work, which is great.

So people buying our store lambs can know they can buy a confidence

and drench them when they get home to a quarantine drench.

And I think people buying store lambs do need to ask that question of their supply.

What is their drench status?

Interesting. Yes, there's a good feedback on that.

Is that help? Do you think having that data available?

Yeah, so I think so.

Yeah, I think the stud helps as well.

People with a lot of repeat bars, they know the lambs grow when they take them home.

They've got a good reputation for that, which is great.

But, yeah, the fact they know they can drench them with a normal drench

when they get home and they don't have to go straight.

Well, they might use the top shelf drench for the quarantine drench,

which would be good practice.

But then they know from then on they can just use normal drenches

and they're still going to work.

Interesting. Yeah, good stuff.

Okay, I think there's only one more thing that we probably haven't covered.

It's the continuing work alongside beef and lamb, New Zealand.

I think that's something that you've been championing for a number of years.

Yeah, so I've had a long association with beef and lamb,

and I was on the central South Island beef and lamb council

for probably longer than I should have been, about 19 years.

And, yeah, so it also involved with the beef and lamb genetics

through the sheep advisory group and the beef advisory group and stuff.

And when I first came on to the perifit board,

yeah, I thought we needed to be communicating more

and working together for the betterment of the whole beef industry.

And I think that's really been apparent in the last few years.

Beef and lamb took representatives from most breeds to America nearly three years ago

for a research trip.

We learned a lot over there and bounced a lot of ideas off each other.

And we've been able to implement some of those changes in the last few years as an industry.

There's a few projects that beef and lamb are working on at the moment

through the informing New Zealand beef program.

They're looking at worm resistance.

Like we've been able to select for worm resistance in sheep for a while.

It hasn't been a lot of work done with cattle.

There was some done about 20 years ago and then it fell away.

So we're working on that.

We had all our calves sampled by the beef and lamb team at weaning.

And then we'll follow them through the autumn and do drench checks

and feed collect counts and work out the pedigree lines of the cattle

to see if we've got some resistance genes in there.

They're doing that on a variety of farms around the country.

So we're happy to help them with that.

One of their other projects is more of a maternal cow project around mature cow weight.

We've always had mature cow weight as a trait in our indexes.

If they grow well, that's great.

But if they grow well, you can end up with bigger cows and bigger cows tend to eat more.

So there's a penalty for mature cow weight.

But this project is more about the fuller picture.

So measuring body condition score and hip height.

Because if we just penalize big cows, we might actually be penalizing

so the wrong type of cow need a factor in that body condition score

and hip height to get a full picture of that cow.

So quite a few breeders around the country are recording that data for beef and lamb.

And they're actually planning to run a crossbreed evaluation on that.

So that'll potentially be the first multibreed breeding value we get

across perifid and angus, which will potentially be run through helical,

which is great.

Planning happening in that world, that is for sure.

Robert, thanks for a bit of a sneak peek into it.

I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Yeah. No, thank you very much.

Thank you.