Light shines on Wagyu
Two dairy farmers have found a way around a fluctuating calf market by partnering with First Light. Words Sheryl Haitana.
The light has dawned on the value proposition of using Wagyu beef for Northland farmer Victor Rutherford, to the point where he now puts Wagyu across his entire herd. Located 50km from Dargaville, Donnelly’s Crossing is a 450ha property milking 700 Kiwicross cows on a 350ha milking platform.
Victor started breeding Wagyu calves eight years ago. The secure return for his calves and a great relationship with First Light has driven him to breed Wagyu across the entire herd, and buy in his dairy replacements.
“First Light has been a very reliable and honourable crowd to work with. My confidence in them just grew and I just kept increasing the numbers of calves I did. You get a fairer price for the calves and you know a year in advance what you will get paid.”
Victor only uses artificial insemination (AI) across his once-a-day split calving herd, with an eight-week mating programme in spring and five weeks in autumn. By rearing the Wagyu calves to 95kg and buying in his dairy replacements he is able to improve cashflow and has 18 months without additional animals, onfarm. Not only does Victor receive a competitive price for his animals, he also receives an additional $4/kg for anything above 95kg – a great added bonus. “First Light is a growing company. The people are real farmers who really understand how things work.”
The Wagyu have also become a great solution to reducing bobby calves in Paul Scheres’ operation.
Paul milks 420 Friesian/Kiwicross cows on his Waiohutu Farms operation at Tīrau and winter-milks another 520 Holsteins for Grangelands Farms at Putaruru.
He is putting 30–35% of Wagyu semen across his herd and rearing the spring-born calves to 95kg and the autumn-born calves to 200kg.
“It works well, we rear those calves on milk through winter and by the time spring comes I don’t have to worry about feed. With the way the bobby calf issue is going, it’s a good solution, we get paid better money and we don’t have to worry about the calf market bottoming out through the season and being stuck with the little and late calves,” he says.
‘First Light has been a very reliable and honourable crowd to work with. My confidence in them just grew and I just kept increasing the numbers of calves I did. You get a fairer price for the calves and you know a year in advance what you will get paid.’
Paul also adds that First Light are extremely reliable to deal with from mating right through to calf collections.
He has also been really happy with the calving ease of the Wagyu beef across his herd.
“I’ve had no calving issues, even over my Kiwicross cows, so I’m really happy. I have had issues with other beef breeds in the past, but I have not had one single hard calving. The calves are averaging 35–40kg liveweight.”
Visit firstlight.farm
