Biddles Steak of Origin

In 2009 Chris & Karren Biddles were successful Angus stud breeders and producers of excellent beef, winning several Steak of Origin Awards. Today they are still succeeding in both those areas but have modified their management and planning to take account of dry autumns, Theileria, and the return of family to the farm.

In 2009 Rural Delivery visited Te Atarangi Angus, the stud farm of Chris and Karren Biddles near Te Kopuru, south of Dargaville on the Poutu Peninsula that is split off from mid Northland by the Wairoa River (the northern reach of the Kaipara Harbour).

At that time the 1000 ha business included 550 effective ha on the home property and 250 effective ha on a neighbouring lease block. On those 800 ha they ran a herd of 200 registered Angus stud cows producing bulls for sale as yearlings to dairy farmers.

In addition they ran a commercial herd of 300 Angus cross cows producing beef for the local trade. Half of the herd were Jersey cross, a combination that Chris had found performed very well on his property. The rest were Friesian and Hereford crosses.

The Biddles had been very active in the Angus Breed Society and were founding suppliers to the Angus Pure branded beef programme, but what brought them to Rural Delivery’s attention originally was their success in the Steak of Origin competition. In 2007 they were overall Supreme Winners and first in the Best of British category; in 2008 they were second in the Best of Brand, and in 2009 their Angus and Angus cross cattle comprised a quarter of all finalists and won a series of firsts, seconds and thirds in various categories.

That success has continued. In 2012 they were proclaimed Producer of the Decade, and as if that wasn’t enough, they were overall Supreme Winners again in 2013. Chris says that win was significant.

“We won with a crossbred quarter-Jersey bull and that was popular with some people and very unpopular with others, especially with my fellow Angus breeders who are not keen on Jerseys. They need to get their heads out of the sand,” he says.

“We were in the finals with crossbreds last year and we had two semi-finalists this year. We’ve only missed out on the finals a couple of times in the past 13 years and it’s interesting that those years had good summers. Each year that we have done quite well we’ve had bad summers, so I think that the roughage and a bit of dry tucker produces good meat.”

Te Atarangi Angus Stud was started in 1988 with just a few animals, but by the mid 2000s had grown to a herd of around 200.

“About 20 years ago we chose to select for successful heifer mating and ease of calving, and it is quite hard to find bulls that thrive in our rather harsh environment. Cattle from outside the area often struggle, so for the past six years we have been using our own bulls,” says Chris.

“We are also using some semen from an Australian stud located in drought prone country. We synchronise the whole herd and use AB on about 25%. The herd is mated for only two cycles and any cows that fail to conceive are culled. We started that regime about eight years ago and in the first year we lost about a third of our cows, and just about every one was a good cow but they fed their calves too well and just didn’t suit our environment.”

Chris aims to produce 100 yearling bulls for sale each year, and believes that Te Atarangi is the only stud that focuses on heifer fertility and ease of calving. Certainly their annual sale on the first Wednesday in September is one of the first and largest in the country.

“Fertility is the best thing the stud breeders can provide for their clients because there is no profit in a dead calf or an empty cow, but not enough breeders do that,” he says.

“With our bulls we are also trying to breed easy calving so that people don’t have to get up in the middle of the night to check their heifers.”

In 2009 Chris was running 200 stud cows but decided to increase numbers to ensure he had 100 bulls to sell each year – in one year the herd produced 65% heifers. Last year the herd numbered 340, but Chris has now decided to reduce the herd size.

“We are calving 300 stud cows this year and probably dropping down to 260 or 270 next year because we are now culling cattle that are poor producers and we are hoping that every male born would be capable of going to the sale,” says Chris.

“Also stud cows are expensive to keep. They are a lot of work with recording and everything else, they eat a lot more grass than a crossbred cow, and breeding costs are high. So I think it’s a case of getting the balance right so that we can still produce 100 bulls for sale with the minimum number of stud cows.”

“Of course we could cut down the herd considerably and have 30 fewer bulls in the sale, but then they would become too expensive and we will lose clientele. You have to have bulls that are affordable.”

Since 2009 the size of the crossbred herd has been halved to about 150 Angus/Jersey crosses. This cross is not popular for beef production but Chris likes them for their size, fertility and feed conversion efficiency.

“Much of our farm is sandy and we are susceptible to dry summers so I don’t want a big cow. They also need to produce a good calf for finishing and get back into calf easily,” he says.

“Originally I wanted to produce Hereford/Angus crosses but I couldn’t get a good supply of heifers. So I started buying back Jersey/Angus cows from a dairy farmer client who bought my meaty bulls, and found that these animals were ideal for our environment and pasture growth curve.”

The herd’s three-quarter Angus calves used to be weaned in March or when there was enough feed for them, but as a result of Chris’s visit to Australia he now weans them in February onto baleage. They are reared and finished on the farm and sold as 2-year olds to the local trade at carcass weights in the 270-290kg range.

Although annual rainfall averages 1260 mm it is not consistent and over the past decade autumns have been pretty dry, says Chris.

“We’ve had a good summer this year but total rainfall is about 100mm down on our yearly average. This time last year (early May) we were only just coming out of a six-month drought that was a shocker,” he says.

“We’d had droughts two years in a row, the first year we handled it because we had lots of baleage and hay but the following year we had a poor spring and we ended up buying feed. It was November before everything picked up and we finally had a bit of surplus grass to feed the cattle. That takes a big toll on staff.”

The Biddles have increased the amount of conserved feed in the past couple of years. In the first big drought they made 1100 bales of hay and baleage and had 300 on hand, and the next year with little spring growth made only 750 and had 300 on hand.

“This year we’ve made 1600 and we expect to go into next summer with 6 – 700 on hand. We are actually making a bit more baleage than hay partly because of shed capacity, and baleage is a bit easier to make although it is more expensive and slower to feed out,” says Chris.

Originally Chris used cropping as a means of getting the three-spray programme needed to get rid of kikuyu and weeds prior to regrassing.

“We used to put Friesian bulls on the crops but we’ve seen there is an economic advantage in young heifers or steers grazing them. They can do a kilogram per day over a period when they would be static if they were not on the crop, so now we sow 15 – 20ha of Pasja each year,” he says.

“I would like to irrigate the flats because we have a lot of good water down there and during dry summers we could be irrigating five days per week and that would save one person feeding out. However I don’t know whether I could raise the capital needed.”

The property is a long one that has springs at both ends and so has no shortage of water. At the back (Tasman Sea) end, Chris and two others built a water ram in 1986 that pumps water to a large part of the farm.

“The two other guys, a water man and a concrete man, were both a bit older than me and when we finished the job they said to me that that would be the last time they had anything to do with the ram – I might, but they certainly wouldn’t,” recalls Chris.

However, 26 years later when we ripped up the concrete, pulled the ram mechanism out and rebuilt it and put it back in, it was the same people who did the job.

In 2012 the tick-borne disease Theileria was identified on the farm – a first for NZ. One of the farm staff saw a calf sitting on its own and looking drowsy. A few days later there was another calf in a similar condition that died.

“So we started talking to the vets and spent six weeks testing unsuccessfully for different things. Then MPI funded blood sampling from 40 cows and 40 calves and that’s when they discovered Theileria,” says Chris.

“Every single animal had Theileria but only about 10% were clinical. By this time we had lost about 17 calves and just as we discovered the cause, the local vets’ phones started ringing red hot and they were able to tell farmers that the problem was Theileria, but you couldn’t do anything about it.”

“Through our records we have discovered that almost every animal lost through Theileria had a problem as a calf with mis-mothering and not getting colostrum for 12 hours. If they miss out on colostrum in their first 12 hours they are far more prone to infection. Now every time young calves come through the yards, we put insecticide on them to kill ticks. The manufacturer claims protection for up to six weeks but we are confident of only three weeks protection.”

“There are four stages in a tick’s life and it has to have a host in three of them. The mistake people can make is to treat their cattle and then put them onto clean pasture. The best thing to do is to treat them and put them onto the worst paddocks and that will help kill off the ticks,” says Chris.

“We treat the calves from birth right through until Christmas, and the cows at the end of November.”

The property has productive peat flats, some reasonably steep hills, rolling sand country and a rugged area at the coast, which has a very little topsoil – “good cow country”, says Chris.

“Back in 2009 we were spraying out a lot of kikuyu and using the cross-slot drill in the sand but it is uneconomic to regrass the sand now. We still spray out the kikuyu on the peat every five or six years but it comes back over the following five years and you lose 50% of your grazing. It grows twice as quickly on the peat as anywhere else,” he says.

“At the moment we are just sowing annuals because we are trying to re-contour and get rid of weeds. We are using a rye/clover mix and we have gone big on plantain because it is amazingly prolific. We also sow chicory because the stock really love it and although it is not persistent I’m still prepared to spend money on it.”

“Because of the regrassing programme we have lifted P levels and so at present we are just putting on three tonnes of lime and 80kg of sulphur per hectare. We also use strategic applications of N, normally 50kg/ha just before rain.”

In 2009 the Biddles were leasing 250ha. Since then they have bought 70% of that block.

In 2009 they employed one married couple. Now their daughter and son-in-law Kim and Charles Samuels also work on the farm, and their arrival in 2013 was unexpected.

“Succession planning is an issue for many farmers our age although I had never bothered with it because no one seemed to be interested in the farm, but all of a sudden we got a phone call and they asked to come home. They were sick of being in the city,” says Chris.

“Recently we’ve talked to my accountant about their possibly purchasing the farm in five years and he suggested that they lease it for a couple of years and then purchase later on. So we are looking at how they could finance the lease of half of the farm from next year. It’s certainly an option worth looking at.”