Bulls sell to three states at Weeran

COVID-19 restrictions did cancel the Byaduk stud's inspection day, but it didn't stop buyers inspecting bulls prior to sale day.

The $30,000 top-priced bull of the sale - Lot 4, Weeran Quadruplet - was secured by a syndicate of Lachie McKenzie, Bruanlea, Byaduk, David and Rosie Merrim, Freshwater Creek, and Bryan and Sam Hayden, Buchan Station, Buchan.

New purchaser of the stud Mr McKenzie was fortunate to arrange an inspection day to assess Lot 4 prior to the sale.

"We will use the bull for our spring joining here at Tarranlea, after he has been collected he will be used for artificial insemination (AI) before going out as a back-up bull," he said.

"He has a fantastic data set, we actually had him selected before looking at our selected bull's data, he just had an outstanding phenotype.

"Whilst we took into account his carcase data and birthweight, in our view the calving ease and growth is so important, because you get a live calf on the ground and you're paid on weight.

"I've seen a lot of Weeran-blood calves at store sales and really liked their type, and given that we are building our female numbers up we decided to focus on quality and AI, and it gave us a lot of confidence that Lot 4 had already been used over heifers."

Volume buyers for the sale were return purchasers Gorden and Alexandra Dickinson, Nareen Station, Coleraine, purchasing nine bulls to a top of $18,000 and average of $13,888.

"We have been purchasing Weeran bulls for nearly 18 years now, coming over from breeding Herefords," Mr Dickinson said.

"We were selecting bulls today for moderate birthweight, good growth rates, temperament is very important to us, and we find that [Weeran stud principals] Alec and Jo [Moore] do a lot of handling here, making the cattle easier to handle.

"We're running a breeding herd, growing our steers out to roughly 500kg, across our two properties in Victoria and SA.

"Whilst most of our bulls will stay on farm in Victoria, the three yearling bulls we purchased will go over to our heifers in SA for joining."

Mr Moore was ecstatic with the results of the sale.

"This sale is very heavily weighted towards calving ease as a focus for the bulls on offer, and I think the buyers here were indicative of that as it suits the spring calving season," he said.

"The expectations for this sale were well and truly met, we know the industry is in a great shape, and people are getting phenomenal returns combined with good seasons.

"If you didn't want to breed cattle now, you never would."