DREAM TAKES TWIN OAKS NORTH

Words by Sarah Horrocks and images by Greg Bowker

When Roger and Susan Hayward shifted the Twin Oaks Angus stud to Te Akau in March 2016, their 16-unit loads of stud females trundled up the South Island from Albury, across Cook Strait and steamed into the Waikato with genetics aplenty and all hooves crossed.

The Haywards said at the time that they’d give their dream 10 years and if the stud didn’t work they’d be content with running commercial cows.

Back in South Canterbury, Twin Oaks had been selling about 20 two-year-old bulls annually, a humble beginning for a firstgeneration Angus stud that was established on a property more suited to intensive farming than cows. Roger and Susan knew that if they wanted to progress they had to make a bold move, but overseas investors kept pushing them out of the most suitable farms in the South Island.

“The cost of land compared to the return on our business just wasn’t going to work,” Roger says.

After a land hunt that lasted two years, the couple ended up at Waipapa Station in Te Akau, nestled just north of Raglan on the west coast and 60km from Hamilton.

In the past seven years, the stud has thrived and seems to suit the 865ha station. After their first June on-farm sale in 2016, Roger and Susan made the decision to introduce a yearling sale with the idea of giving clients the opportunity to purchase a lower-priced bull that was well suited to yearling-heifer mating. In what seems like a short time for the stud breeding game, the two Twin Oaks sales have rapidly grown, now selling 50 bulls at each, as well as another 25 bulls in the paddock.

“At least 55 of those bulls are heading back down to the South Island.”

The yearlings aren’t an inferior product, they just appeal to different markets. Roger says that while some potential buyers worry they won’t grow out by December when their South Island clients are using them, they’re always at or above 600kg.

Stud female numbers now rest at 400 (including two-year heifers), and there are another 150 yearling heifers mated. Trade lambs are brought in as feed allows, and the total wintering capacity of the operation is 10,000 stock units.

“With the lambs, we buy anything and everything but do try to buy them in lines if we can.”

Although the operation is a straight grass programme for the cattle, 40ha of rape is grown for the lambs and this enables a five-year regrassing programme across the paddock country on Waipapa.

Cows do it tough

The climate is harsh, with wet winters and hot, dry summers, and Roger is first to admit the cows do it tough. He believes that if he started feeding silage in the droughts he’d always have to feed them. So it’s a hard-line policy.

“The cows climb for their feed and have to burn it off their backs in summer.”

Like all North Island hill country farms, the cows are used as a grazing tool to clean up pasture for the sheep (lambs in this case) and there’s no special treatment.

All females, including the yearling heifers, are put through artificial insemination (AI) in November and then put out in mobs of 70 with home-bred yearling bulls for 1.5 cycles (five weeks) to follow up.

The conception rate for AI sits at 65‒-75% in the main cow mob, with yearling heifers at about 60%. After the follow-up bulls, they end up with approximately 7% empty over the two cycles and these are culled.

“Two cycles maintains our high fertility in the herd and keeps calving dates condensed,” Roger says.

Once they’re scanned in-calf, the cows go out in calving-date mobs of 60-‒100, with the exception of the yearling heifers who stay on their own.

The AI sires used are either home bred or sourced from Australia, and have been for a few years now. The yearling bulls sold in 2022 were primarily by Millah Murrah Paratrooper, who was used heavily over the last two calf drops and there are around 80 yearling heifers by him.

Paratrooper the key Roger says that everyone is trying to get phenotype, structural soundness and fertility, as well as every EBV trait, into a single bull package.

“When we saw Paratrooper’s data we knew we had to go over and have a look at him.”

So in September 2019 Roger and Susan flew to Australia for the Millah Murrah sale because Paratrooper’s data told them he was going to be efficient, more compact and different to everything else. And he was. Roger says his structure and phenotype were incredible.

“He is stacked with calving ease, growth, fertility; he’s almost perfect when it comes to the EBVs we want.”

The Haywards were in the syndicate of underbidders and secured 18 months of exclusive semen rights in New Zealand, taking 500 doses. Paratrooper’s progeny sold the strongest of those auctioned at the yearling sale in 2022, and there are more being offered at the two-year-old sale on June 9 this year.

“He’s the bull we’d been searching for and he’s really exciting!”

Paratrooper has given the Twin Oaks’ herd a big jump in the direction of their main objectives ‒soundness, efficiency, fertility, phenotype, carcase attributes, growth and calving ease, and it’s all there in one package. This is a big win for both the Haywards and their clients.

Efficiency is a factor that should underpin all good breeding programmes. A cow that gets in calf every year, grows that calf, eats the least amount possible and then gets back in calf again, every year. Part of this is returns, and Susan knows that although you’re paid on carcase weight in NZ, if you can hit quality premiums for marbling you’ll be rewarded.

“You get $1/kg more for meat quality,” she says.

In 2021 the Haywards also purchased Waitara Quidditch in Australia and received his semen between Christmas and New Year. So they held back some cows for late AI and have calves on the ground to him now. He is under contract with Genetics Australia.

“Quidditch has good calving ease, moderate growth, low mature-cow weight but still a huge carcase weight,” Roger says.

Twin Oaks has a range of clients wanting a wide range of bulls. Roger and Susan ultimately source the bulls for their own cow herd to produce the females they need. However, they can still produce an animal for everyone.

“With genomics you can have average growth and still get high carcase weights.”

Millah Murrah Nectar is another bull they purchased as a half share in 2021. They needed him for a line of their females because he has moderate growth, high fats and superb marbling.

“The biggest problem that we have in performance cattle is keeping them structurally sound and at Millah Murrah you seem to get 100% soundness,” Roger says.

Finishing facts

While Twin Oaks doesn’t run any trade steers for biosecurity reasons, the stud does finish 80-‒100 of its own heifers annually. These are yearlings that are empty or not suitable for mating, as well as any once-bred heifers that aren’t kept as replacements.

The heifers are processed through Alliance’s Handpicked programme and 100% of them hit the premium grade specs. Susan says that although this is reassuring, it’s more rewarding when they receive kill sheets from clients who are hitting those grades with their own progeny at Alliance and Silver Fern Farms.

There are a number of clients who have been eye-muscle scanning for a number of years and selecting the heifers with the highest IMF to use as their replacements. With the help of the right genetics, they’re getting good improvements in their cow herds.

“The ones who have been doing that the longest are going great-guns,” Susan says.

Future proofing

Technology is something Roger and Susan invest in heavily, using every tool available. Every animal on the farm is HD50ktested to improve accuracy of EBVs and everything is eyemuscle scanned, even the culls. More information means more knowledge.

Shifting their data to Angus Australia in 2021 gave access to new EBVs, including claw set, foot angle, net feed efficiency and now leg angle too. The Haywards pushed pretty hard in the initial phase of the shift because they could see the professionalism, resources, educational tools and technological development were far superior to what was provided in New Zealand.

“We needed to be part of that change, to move the beef industry forward here in New Zealand,” Susan says.

Going forward, Roger and Susan are holding their course, with thoughts to increase the number of bulls sold if that can reduce their bull wastage. They currently sell just over half the bulls they breed, due to their strict selling criteria.

“They have to be sound, semen tested and industry good as far as carcase and meat quality goes,” says Roger.

Australian Ben Simpson of OGA creative agency is enlisted to video the bulls every year and the Haywards believe this is an essential marketing tool. In June 2022, Susan realised that when clients rang to ask about bulls in the catalogue, they only ever asked about the ones with photographs. So for the last yearling sale, every bull had a video published on bidr. No matter where a client is in the world, they can have a good look at those videos and place a bid on sale day.

“Bidr is a really important tool for our clients,” says Susan.

In the quieter periods, the Haywards take time to visit their clients, which means the best part of two-and-a-half months on the road every year. This is seen as extremely valuable time because they know how the bulls are working, where they are working, and they get good insight into their clients’ programmes.

During school and university holidays, Roger and Susan’s three children are home to help: Thomas is a second-year law student, Olivia (16) finished school in 2022 and has just gone farming, and Jessica (13) is at school in Hamilton.

At the end of the day, Roger and Susan made the decision to move to the North Island for their family unit. They have established themselves on a palatial farm and they’re bettering it every year, with waterways, dams and the harbour now fenced and 30,000 new native plants in the ground.

The Twin Oaks dream has become a reality for Roger and Susan Hayward, and luck has had nothing to do with it.