Technology, equipment and genetics all play a part in fine-tuning and adding value to a North Canterbury sheep, beef and deer operation. Sandra Taylor reports. Photos by Lucy Hunter-Weston.
Scott Hassall is an opportunist.
If there is any chance to grow, fine-tune or add value to his North Canterbury farming business, Scott will grab it and this includes making use of technology, forages, genetics and equipment.
Scott and his wife Jo have managed Iffley, a mixed terrain sheep, beef and deer farm in North Canterbury’s Scargill Valley for the past 22 years.
Owners John and Pauline McGrath own the sheep and deer and Scott and Jo own the cattle in what is a share-farming arrangement.
Now covering 940 hectares, Iffley has grown over the years as neighbouring farms have come up for sale and in line with this growth, they have expanded their deer operation from 180 to 800 hybrid breeding hinds. All the hinds go to Wapiti stags (they buy in replacements) and all progeny are normally finished between September and November at a target average carcase weight of 60kg.
A combination of genetics, forages and management helps Scott and Jo achieve their goal of maximising carcase weights as early in the season as possible and Scott is looking to refine this even further.
They source their Wapiti genetics from John Faulkner’s Clachanburn stud and have, over the years, been using four distinct family lines. Scott has noticed a big difference in weaner growth rates, with some averaging 1kg/day while others were doing nothing like that. To identify what sire lines are performing best in the Iffley environment, this year Scott mated hinds in groups to different sire lines and will EID all the fawns at weaning.
He will use a wand scanner to record and calculate growth rates and correlate this data with stag families, which is what he has been doing with his cattle.
“It will give me an idea of what families are producing animals that are growing well.
“It’s very interesting information,” he says.
“We make that decision early because the ewe lambs are our focus, we need to ensure they are big enough to get in lamb as a hogget.”
The weaner finishing operation is based on two dates that Scott recites like a mantra, May 21 and August 10. Lack of daylight hours between these dates means the weaners shut down and go into maintenance mode, so they won’t gain much weight over June/July.
They therefore feed the weaners as well as they can before May and have lucerne and new grass pastures primed and ready to go in early August to maximise spring growth rates.
This year the venison market has collapsed due to the Covid-19 global pandemic and Scott says while the deer are typically the best-performing enterprise in the business, this year the schedule is close to half what it was last year.
Because it has been such a good spring in North Canterbury, Scott has decided to hold on to the finished weaners for longer than normal to try and add value to them. The deer are processed at Mountain River.
Cattle: The French Connexion
In 2015 Scott’s father Bill passed away, and in 2016 Scott and Jo, with the support and encouragement of John and Pauline, moved his family’s Charolais stud to Iffley.
Scott and Jo had been running ex Colenso Stud Angus cows for several years before 2016 and while they are not registered, Scott has been artificially inseminating (AI) the cows to continually improve their genetics.
Charolais were used as a back-up to the AI programme and at 18 months, the resulting crossbred bulls were growing at 2.36kg/day.
“It was awesome, so when the opportunity came to take over the stud it was a no-brainer.”
Because they were already recording the Angus cows, the stud was not going to add extra work on top of what they were already doing and as they never castrated any of the male Angus calves, they were used to growing bulls for either sale or processing.
Scott’s mother Geraldine, who is still very much involved with the stud, says she and Bill bought their first Charolais bull in 1974 and have stuck faithfully to pure French genetics ever since. Sourcing the sires they want has always been a challenge because there are a limited number of pure French Charolais in New Zealand. Fortunately, they have been able to get the genetics they want from Ireland and more recently, Canada.
The move to Iffley was also a chance for Scott and Geraldine to rebrand the stud to French ConneXion, a nod to the Charolais’ value in crossbreeding programmes and to the fact they are the only fully French Charolais stud in NZ.
Scott says they have stuck to the full French lines because they believe that the purest form of Charolais will generate the greatest hybrid vigour response in a crossbreeding programme.
Last year they sourced a poll French Charolais bull from Canada because of the increasing demand for poll cattle in light of recent government regulations about the transport and processing of horned animals.
However, both Geraldine and Scott feel there is still a place for horned animals because they tend to be bigger-framed and hardier than their poll equivalents.
“But we are certainly in the early stages of poll breeding.”
Because North Canterbury summers are notoriously dry, their breeding objectives within the stud is to breed easy calving cows that will perform irrespective of the climate.
“The ultimate is having a cow that is able to perform on bugger all,” Scott says.
Scott and Jo run 80 breeding cows, a combination of Charolais and Angus and again, Scott uses technology in the form of Gallagher’s phone app to help with recording at calving.
At birth, he scans the calf, recording the tag number and birthweight on the app and sends this information through to Geraldine who does all the recording and bookwork for the stud.
While land use change, particularly trees into hill country, is challenging the traditional commercial breeding cow herd, the dairy industry is increasingly eager to use beef genetics to add value to their calf crop and reduce the number of bobby calves.
“It’s solely dependent on the dairy farmer. It comes down to perception and management.”
On his phone, Scott has photos of Charolais cross calves sent to him by happy dairy farmer clients who have not reported any calving issues with the Charolais genetics.
“It’s solely dependent on the dairy farmer. It comes down to perception and management,” Scott says.
Any bulls not sold as breeding animals are finished on Iffley.
Sold on Combi clamp
The most recent opportunity Scott has grabbed is the South Island Combi Clamp agency and he has a recalcitrant cow to thank for that.
He initially saw the clamp at Mystery Creek four years ago and while he was impressed with it, a new cattle crush wasn’t in the budget at the time.
It was at calving last year, when Scott walked a cow (a reluctant mother) and calf about an hour to the yards only for her to break through the old home-made crush and head down the road in the dark. It was then he decided they were buying a Combi Clamp.
From a stock handling point of view, Scott says it has been life-changing.
“It features an auto-catch head bale which puts the crush into a league of its own.”
Cattle work has become a one-man operation. Scott says he can be pushing animals in from the back of the yards while the first animal up has already caught itself.
“It is fool-proof and very safe.”
Scott was so impressed with it that, encouraged by John, he rang the company and offered to be their agent.
While Scott admits it was a bit of a random call, Combi Clamp surprisingly jumped at his offer as the existing agent was looking to retire. After meeting each other, the deal was sealed.
He now also owns their sheep handling system and is also sold on it. Because of the way it is set-up, Scott says it makes sheep work a whole lot easier.
Recently he was able to dag all of the ewes and lambs in the wet while waiting to cut silage. In the past, he would have been tired and sore from bending over sheep all day, but now feels physically fine.
Scott says most farmer enquiries usually come through either at lunch-time or at night, which fits in with the farm operation. He will be attending South Island field days and A&P shows, when they are back up and running.
Ask Scott what the most profitable enterprise is within their business and he says it is a difficult one to answer.
While deer have outperformed sheep and beef in recent years, that has changed this year and they are enjoying good returns for lamb. However, Scott points out that if labour was taken into account when comparing enterprises, it could be a different story.
Instead all the Iffley stakeholders value the diversity of their business and their ability to identify the strengths of their farm which include early, healthy country and having a good management team.
The Inverdale difference
The ability to perform irrespective of the climate was one of the reasons Scott and Jo and John and Pauline have chosen to run an Inverdale ewe flock.
They winter 1500 ewes and 300 replacements (Scott and Jo won the composite section of the national ewe hogget competition in 2012). Sheep numbers have dropped back over the years from a peak of over 3000, due to drought and an increase in deer numbers.
The ewes scan 190-208% without any flushing and wean between 150-168% and Scott runs a flexible policy when it comes to finishing.
He says the focus is very much on growing the ewe lambs and they won’t compromise ewe lamb growth rates for the sake of finishing all of their lambs.
They will typically take two to three pre-weaning drafts and then will make the decision whether to sell the lambs store or retain them based on the season.
“We make that decision early because the ewe lambs are our focus, we need to ensure they are big enough to get in lamb as a hogget.”
Scott explains that because they are doing a straight Inverdale cross (they get their rams from Chris Adams at Te Anau) 50% of the ewe lambs will be infertile.
Because the infertile ewe lambs have undeveloped teats, they are easily identified. Scott says they tip the lambs up and teat-score them at weaning.
If in doubt, they are left in the replacement mob and identified at pregnancy scanning. They are then sold as prime winter lambs.
“We take out 600-700 ewe lambs and expect to get 300-350 replacements, all of which will be in-lamb.”
Scott says there is some wariness among farmers around Inverdale genetics because of this infertility, but he points out that every ewe in his flock is 100% fertile and the small amount of extra work at weaning is more than made up for by ewe productivity.
Underpinning the deer, sheep and beef genetics is a mix of lucerne, specialist forage crops and predominantly prairie grass-based pastures.
Lucerne and specialist finishing crops such as a Hunter, chicory and clover mix are used for growing out ewe lambs in summer. Lucerne is critical for driving pre-weaning growth rates in lambs.
While Scott doesn’t lamb the ewes on the lucerne, they are run on to the forage soon after lambing.
They have about 60ha in lucerne and Scott describes this forage as a key component of their business. It’s used for ewes and lambs and hinds and fawns in January as well as being used to make supplementary feed. The fawns are weaned onto lucerne and brassicas and wintered on oats and grass and kale crops.
An eye in the sky
Last year, Scott invested in a drone and now wouldn’t be without one.
He uses if for monitoring stock, particularly at lambing and calving and has found it to be very useful for moving deer as they respond really well to the humming noise.
Scott describes a recent incident where he was on one side of the valley and his staff member on the other working in the deer unit. A mob of weaner deer escaped and were heading down the laneway at speed, but Scott was able to send the drone from the opposite side of the farm, turn the deer around and put them back in their paddock.
