Haldon Hereford

Haldon Station runs 700 Hereford cattle which are bred and reared naturally both on flat and hill country. Haldon Herefords have a proven low birth weight and high growth rate, high serving ability and genetically are one of the most predictably sound Hereford cattle in the industry.

Since the 1970’s these cattle have been run under the “Genepool Hereford” recording program, with 20 – 30 high performance bulls being sold at our annual Bull Sale held on the property (this year the sale will be held on June 6th starting at 1.00pm, inspection is welcome).

Long term customers are good proof of our consistency in providing top quality Bulls.

The long history of low birth weights and high growth rate figures initially attracted the Dairy boards LIC to the herd at Haldon. Yearling bulls are now sold to repeat dairy farmers in October/November each year.

Haldon Angus

In 2004 Angus cattle were sourced from Te Mania Stud in North Canterbury being identified as the best producers of Stud Angus and introduced onto Haldon Station to be run as a base stud of Haldon Angus.

Breeding principles for the Angus cattle are based on the well established program developed for our Hereford cattle.

Haldon Genepool

Genepool was developed in 1971 as a way of sourcing top quality proven Hereford bulls suitable for commercial use. Haldon Station with 15 other predominant southland farms representing about 30 000 Hereford cows went around NZ selecting top stud bulls to AI their cows.

The top cows from the initial 15 members were selected to run together at Haldon, they figured if they could survive the 14,400 ha station with its harsh winters and heat sapping summers they would survive anywhere (in reality they have not only survived at Haldon they have thrived!)

Eventually Haldon began to breed its own bulls initially just to supply the needs of the other Genepool members, but as time went on there was more and more demand for the bulls, so an on farm sale has now been held since the early 1980’s.

Since its establishment in 1970 Genepool has built up a wealth of recorded data on growth and functional characteristics on many thousands of cattle. By dedication to performance and progeny testing and the unfailing insistence to link programs at all levels with reference sires Genepool has one of the largest databases on Hereford cattle in NZ.

With such a bank of data, Genepool has identified a computer program that can assimilate this information and produce accurate predictions of a given animals genetic potential, an extraordinarily useful tool for farmers who are looking for some security to purchase proven performers.

The database has evolved and the computer software has been updated over the years and the collation and analysis of the Genepool data is now undertaken by Neil Cullen from the Animal Genomics Section at AgResearch Ruakura.