Bairnsley Highland cattle stud in Gisborne fetches world record price at spring online sale

The top price in the stud's 2022 spring sale offering went to Lot 2, Calmore of Bairnsley, a 14-month heifer which fetched $67,500 in an online auction that averaged $38,533 from six lots.

"This is a bit of a dream for us," Mr Hastie said.

"We have been breeding cattle for a long time and there's ups and downs with every industry every breed."

"This was a long way from what we were expecting for sure, and we're still trying to work out how it happened,"

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After contacting breeders in the USA and Scotland, he believed the price is a world record for the breed, beating a $35,000 sale in Scotland.

He said extraordinary result came down to soaring interest from new farmers with small acreages, most who have moved out of Melbourne in recent years.

In a sign of the breed's demand, an additional three lots sold for more than $30,000 and over 1800 people logged on to observe the sale.

"They're an ancient, very traditional breed, [and] we haven't messed with them too much here," he said.

"They are very much like what they were 200-400 years ago in the Scottish Highlands and on islands off the west coast of Scotland,"

"They're just a no fuss breed and what attracts most people to them are their looks and temperament."

Mr Hastie said the top-priced heifer was home bred and a very traditional type.

"She has a great horned set with lots of hair, and is a very quiet animal which had previously been in a show ring and is very comfortable with the lead," he said.

"She's got a very impressive back end so on a width through the pins and hips, a really good fleshing through the plates, yet still refined, smooth and feminine through the front end."

The buyer of the heifer is a new Highland breeder based in New South Wales who wanted to establish a stud soon and also bought four more lots at the sale.

Bairnsley had recently started to conduct online sales due to a waiting list that that Mr Hastie described as "ridiculous".

"We just couldn't think of a fair way of finding a home for these females, so we just decided to do an online sale and let somebody else decide where they go," Mr Hastie said.

"There's been hundreds of people wanting to buy females lately, and we initially had a waiting list that got ridiculous," he said.

While it is dominant in cooler climates, Mr Hastie said Highland cattle were very adaptable to heat, shedding their coat when its warm and simply "grazing when it's four degrees and hailing".