Newsletter No.17

KWA News | 22nd September 2022

10 February 2023

The Season

Rain rain go away
come again another day.

While spring has technically sprung the rain has, is and will be a continuing feature for some time to come. We have had over 650mls year to date which is a massive amount for Clear Hills.

The impact has been to make all work more difficult and definitely more muddy. Nevertheless, is still vastly better than a drought.

2022 Calves
We have tagged 126 Full Blood calves so far this year and only have another dozen or so to go. Despite the rain it has been a very trouble free calving season this is due to having the cows in much better condition for calving and careful supervision over the entire calving period. We have been very worried by the risk of grass tetany which has struck on several occasions but overall has not been as bad as we anticipated given the lousy weather. We have used liberal amounts of hay and magnesium blocks to counter this risk.

The calves born so far are primarily by Q122 and Mayura Pioneer. The EBVs indicated for these calves are quite exciting we will submit tissue samples for genomic testing in the next few weeks which will allow us to have proper EBV results for these new animals.

We are continuing to target high marbling, good growth, improved milk, large carcass weight and large rib eye areas for our Wagyu’s. The process is certainly working so far.

Bulls
We have seen brisk demand for our bulls. There are no more “R Bulls” for sale and the larger “S Bulls” are also all sold as of today. We have kept some S bulls for sale next season. Thank you to all of our clients who have stepped up and purchased from a selection of excellent animals.

Markets
The market for seed stock continues to be strong with massive prices paid at the several auctions that have taken place over the last few months. Congratulations to Peter Krause for his outstanding result of $400,000 for an unjoined heifer, this is a new all breed record in Australia and possible the world.
The market for F1s continues to be strong although as the year progresses we expect to see a small softening in the face of increase supply of 2021 drop animals.

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