Lake Farm Beef

Lake Farm Beef breed and raise beef and ship directly to consumers – from farm to the plate. In 2009 they won Best of Breed in the Steak of Origin awards.

Colin Brown has a background in the IT industry and used to run the PC Company. He and his wife Keryn bought the 30ha small-farm near Cambridge on the shores of Lake Karapiro about 10 years ago and set about trying to breed the best beef they could – and sell it direct to consumers via the internet.

The property is 30 ha – a small farm by anyone’s measure. Colin and Keryn had had lifestyle blocks in the past but this was a bit of step up. They decided to maximise their returns by selling their beef direct to consumers. They started out with a herd of Simmental cattle but as their business grew they kept looking for cattle breeds which produced good eating quality.

They believe they are unique among commercial farmers in this regard. They are not just growing cattle to achieve the heaviest weight and return at the abattoir, they are growing beef for excellent eating quality.

Their research led them to the Piedmontese breed. They say the Piedmontese are genetically very tender and produce healthy beef. Colin says the meat is low in cholesterol and high in essential fatty acids, Omega 3s etc.

“They have a unique genetic mutation which contributes to muscling. They have a phenomenon called double muscling, so there’s more muscle than other breeds.”

As a purebred, the breed has almost no fat. While that’s good for the health conscious they also know a little bit of fat is important for flavour.

They started out crossbreeding Piedmontese with Simmentals. The progeny were too lean for what they wanted so they went to Angus. They reckon this produces the best balance of what they are after.

After a few years of experimenting, Colin now has 100 cows, two thirds of which are pure Angus.

The Piedmontese breed is doing well in Beef + Lamb NZ’s annual Steak of Origin competition. Lake Farm Beef won the top award in 2009 with an Angus-Piedmontese cross, and a fellow Piedmontese-cross breeder won multiple awards this year on the basis of taste.

Colin imports his Piedmontese semen from Italy, and Angus semen from Australia and the United States.

Colin also reckons the concept of ‘hybrid vigour’ is underrated in this context. He says you have to start with purebred animals to grow good crossbreed cattle. These days the couple are crossbreeding mostly Angus and Hereford cattle with the Piedmontese.

Through selective breeding they’ve continued to develop an elite herd of Angus and Angus/Hereford cross cows. They crossbreed these cows with pure Piedmontese bulls to produce what they reckon is the ultimate beef carcass.

They use an ET programme to collect multiple embryos from their best cows and implant these into the inferior cows so that all cows calve a superior animals.

Lake Farm only runs Angus cows – other breeds are recipients for Angus embryos. All cows are AI’ed or ET’ed with the highest Angus genetics they can find. They synchronise to have a tight calving period – both Spring and Autumn. Only those that don’t hold their AI or ET pregnancy are run with the Piedmontese bull.

They are always maintaining a small number of pure Piedmontese cows which are AI’d with the best bulls to breed a small number of high quality bulls to serve the Angus cows that don’t hold the initial AI or ET pregnancy.

Angus heifers are kept as replacements and the balance of the animals are sold as weaners. The Angus/Piedmontese cross animals will be either sold on a buyback programme or grazed locally.

Colin says the beef breeding business is a bit like choosing an All Black team. The All Blacks only get a Richie McCaw every decade or so. With careful breeding programmes in place, farmers can replicate a Richie McCaw and have multiple brothers and sisters, where the All Blacks get only one chance. Not only that – farmers can set the benchmark that the replacement cows ONLY come from a Richie McCaw sister, and use non invasive ET to replicate the sisters quickly. He says there are so many opportunities to grow the best beef in the world – but it won’t happen without buy-in from farmers.

The chilled carcasses are then shipped to a butcher in Matamata, where they

are further aged (10-14 days), and then cut and vacuum packed. Beef is shipped from there to consumers New Zealand wide.

They ship their beef in aluminium lined cooler bags, by same day or overnight courier. Because of the cost of shipping – they don’t sell individual cuts of beef. They ship a beef “pack” that comprises a cross section of meat from an animal – prime cuts, roasts, diced beef and mince and sausages. The pack sizes range from 5kgs to 40kgs (a quarter of a beast). They also sell some gourmet products.

Colin says one of the problems in buying a beast sight unseen is that you might end up with a fatty, chewy lot of meat – and have a freezer full of it!

What if one of the animals turns out to be tough? Colin says they would feel terrible if a customer ends up with a bad eating experience.

The second issue is that when you buy meat in bulk, it’s only natural to eat all the prime cuts first – and end up with a freezer full of diced beef, mince and sausages.

One of the side effects of having a freezer full of beef is that cost constraints tend for you to not buy other meats until you have emptied out the freezer. In fact you should eat pork, chicken and lamb as well as beef.

The Brown’s solution is that they are prepared to sell 1/4 beast (40kg pack); 1/2 beast (80kg pack) or even a full beast (160 kg pack) – so that you get the bulk buying concession but instead of shipping it all at once, they offer to ship to you in smaller lots, at intervals you set. Customers can have packs sent out fortnightly or monthly, and in 10 or 20kg lots.

Although customers get the bulk rate, they only “pay as you go”. There is no big financial outlay. The meat is vacuum packed and Colin says this will keep perfect in the freezer for a long time. There is no freezer burn with vacuum packed meats.

He also says you know you are buying beef that has been ethically raised in a stress free idyllic environment.