COOMBOONA Holsteins has kick-started a new bull farm at Toolamba, with big hopes to crack the burgeoning Asian dairy market.
Bringing infrastructure up to scratch is one of the first goals at the 445-hectare new bull farm.
Managers Steve and Angela Varcoe say fences, water troughs and laneways are currently being installed to sufficiently house the bulls coming onto the farm.
Hong Kong-based businessman Alex Arena, who owns Coomboona, says the operation will be focused on the highest quality stud cattle.
Recently, he dispersed Coomboona’s commercial cows to focus on developing markets, such as India and Saudi Arabia.
“The goal now is to open up horizons throughout Asia,” Mrs Varcoe said, who has been appointed to help manage the bull farm, with her husband.
Coomboona Holsteins, which totals 2430ha, milks about 780 registered Holsteins.
The operation is divided into separate farms including dairy cows, calves, crops, heifers and now bulls.
The main property at Coomboona is known as Glen Goulburn and is the amalgamation of 15 properties purchased over 25 years.
It is one of the largest irrigation properties in the Goulburn Valley.
Out in the paddock, the Varcoes offer an explanation of Coomboona’s tag system, which gives some insight into the scale of the operation.
“The blue tag is for imported embryos, the gold for elite pedigrees that were born here, the purple for the export market,” Mrs Varcoe said.
Livestock and marketing manager Michael Boyd - previously with World Wide Sires – joined the Goulburn Valley operation two years ago, bringing with him extensive breeding experience.
The Varcoes say Mr Boyd’s input has been beyond measure.
“All embryos are imported from America and Canada, and they go into beef cows,” Mr Varcoe said.
“We basically have a tidal wave of embryos and putting them into beef cows was the best way to take advantage of that. Beef cows also have higher conception rates.
“We basically want to multiply as quickly as we can.”
He said the Coomboona operation was committed to being a leader in the global dairy industry, with elite and imported cows flushed for embryo sales.
The bull farm addition is another way to take advantage of money invested into elite genetics.
“We rear the bulls and send them to Total Livestock for semen collection,” Mrs Varcoe said.
“We have about 112 head on the Toolamba farm at the moment and are running at full capacity, because the infrastructure is still catching up.”
The principal aim is to tap the growing Asian market, but the Varcoes say the domestic market is just as imperative.
“We’ve exported bulls to Indonesia and have a contract on a bull to China,” he said.
“There’s a lot of interest from Asia; the market is enormous.”
With countries like China and Japan expanding their dairy consumption, he said the possibilities were endless.
“We’ve got three of the highest genomically tested bulls in China, one in the United States and one in Canada,” he said.
“This is important, because being able to identify those traits a bull will pass onto his daughters means we can market them much earlier.
“It just speeds up that process.”
Back in Australia, the country’s commercial dairy farmers are also in Coomboona’s sights.
“That is essentially what our bull operation is about,” he said.
“We want to offer these top quality genetics that are coming through now at a fair, decent and affordable price.
“We want to put ourselves out there in a big way.”
Mr Varcoe likened Coomboona’s vision to the scale of the professional stud industry in Canada.
“In Canada it’s just huge. Over there the stud industry is exactly like the race horse industry here,” he said.
But the enterprise is still very much in a development stage, with hopes to grow rapidly, but sustainably.
“We are always looking for talented, enthusiastic people to make that happen,” he said.
* Read the full report in this week's Stock & Land
