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WEDNESDAY, 18 June 2014
Northland One name covers it all
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Wellsford 09 423 7736
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Jersey bull’s lasting legacy By Mike Barrington
A
LONG with pictures of children on the walls of dairy farmers Bruce and Ngaire Cutforth’s home at Whakapara are photographs of Jersey bulls, huge beasts showring posed with their noses held high like a line-up of snooty sultans. But while a ruling Oriental may once have produced scores of offspring from his harem, he couldn’t hold a candle to the fecundity of the Cutforth-bred bulls, particularly 14-year-old Okura Manhatten, put down last month with arthritic hips after siring 44,000 daughters. Manhatten was the top bull on CRV Ambreed’s Jersey sire team for a decade, helping put the company on the map for both Jersey and cross breeding dairy farmers in New Zealand and around the world. CRV Ambreed NZ managing director Angus Haslett said the Northland bull’s genetics were in the pedigree of at least 13 Jersey sires on the latest New Zealand Animal Evaluation list released last month. “Manhatten has made an invaluable contribution to the New Zealand dairy industry,” he said. Mr Cutforth, a former president of the Jersey NZ Council, said Manhatten was notable for his high protein component, with a gene that “was out of the blue.” “We have been fortunate to win the JT Thwaites Sire of the
BREED CHANGER: Bruce and Ngaire Cutforth hold a photograph of their top Jersey bull Okura Manhatten.
Season award with four bulls, but I really wanted a bull that was a breed changer — we got that with Manhatten,” he said. Manhatten is from a stable of exceptional bulls bred from the Cutforth’s Okura stud. But
although a sign at the couple’s front gate says the stud is at their 145ha farm where 430 cows produced 173,000kgMS last year, the pedigree herd is now at their daughter Lyna Beehre and her husband Luke’s farm at
PHOTO/JOHN STONE
Hukerenui. “They have taken over the stud,” Mr Cutforth said. A sharemilker has just moved on to his place and he described seeing cows other than Jerseys grazing his land in the tones of a man who had
spotted two moons in the night sky. Mr Cutforth, 71, grew up on and eventually took over a family farm at Whatatiri where
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