Welcome

Welcome to our third annual “Diamonds Are Forever” bull and female sale.

We are very excited to again this year be hosting our sale on farm at Macorna. We feel having our sale on farm allows us to showcase our cattle the best way possible to their potential new buyers. We have again continued to grow our speckle park program throughout 2022 and are proud to present such a large but quality draft of cattle for your competition.

As many of our repeat clients would know our story, we have started from small beginnings. Like most we started with a few bulls and a handful of females but with the extensive use of ET we have now grown our program to be one of the largest in the country. After many extensive trips to Canada we now feel we have a solid base of Donor cows not only here in Aus in our own paddocks, but also abroad in our partners’ fields in Canada. Our list of Canadian donors continues to grow as we select for fertile cows who can live in and produce progeny to live in all climatic extremes. We would like to sincerely thank all of our partners for their continued support and hard work. Our program wouldn’t be what it is today without all of your effort.

2022 wasn’t without its challenges and rewards and 2023 has started in a similar fashion. Last year just before our sale we welcomed the 4th generation Van der Drift to our family farm. Dustin made an early appearance last year born 7 weeks before his due date but hasn’t looked back. It has been incredibly special to share multiple events with all 4 generations throughout the year and also on farm talking cows in the paddock and at home. It wont be long and we are sure Dustin will be able to tell you who everyone is.

2022 also saw the introduction of our “Northern Impact Sale”, a second annual sale for BDS. The risk of sending a team of bulls to central Queensland was both daunting but also very rewarding. It was great to see so much support for not only the Speckle Park breed but for our bulls who had in their travels covered over 2000km to get to the sale. Whist we had bulls from our “Diamonds are Forever” sale last year go to Queensland, it was great to talk to fellow graziers on their home turf and learn about what bulls were going to best suit their needs both climatically and phenotypically.

2022 also saw yet another flood for us here at BDS. With multiple creeks flooding all at once around us, it certainly felt like we lost the month of October just checking flood water, watching it destroy crops and paddocks of saved feed. Luckily our floods are slow moving so we didn’t lose any stock but the impact on the stock was clearly noticeable. With this in mind, we are so impressed with how the Speckles can turn it around so quickly and have responded well and are now ready for the sale.

2023 saw yet another challenging summer with a cold, slow and dry start to summer. With minimal growth of our summer crops we have had one of our largest years feeding hay and silage to keep the cattle growing.

In 2023 so far, we have had our biggest achievement to date in the show circuit. The 2023 Sydney Royal Speckle Park Feature Show was truly a spectacle and we were incredibly proud to be a part of it. We had our largest ever show team of 22 head. It had its challenges but it was great to see the success within our team. We were lucky enough to be awarded multiple Champion and Reserve Champion ribbons along with the Most Successful Beef Exhibitor of the Show. Our family favourite BD 5E Rehersal Dinner R888 was crowned Grand Champion Female of the show as well as being placed TOP 5 in the interbreed. It was also great to see other progeny of Black Diamond stock at the show, The Grand Champion Speckle Park steer on the hoof was the progeny of BD 60A Popcorn P203. Congratulations again to the Sowden Family on their terrific steer.

As you can see this years sale preparations have been full of many challenges but we are extremely excited to be able to offer this cohort of cattle for your competition. We truly believe with each year our sale line up gets better and believe this is the strongest line up of bulls and females we have offered to date. Our embryo programs have allowed us to access some of the more outcross genetics to the Australian herd, allowing our buyers to get ahead of the pack using these outcross genetics. Some of the cattle in this years sale are the first offering of stock by our own Canadian cows and bulls so make the most of this opportunity.

We look forward to you joining us in person on the 13th of May on farm at 184 Hayden Lane, Macorna, Vic to inspect the cattle and talk all things Speckle Parks.

With Thanks

Van der Drift Family

Murray (p) 0439 205 030 (e) murray.vanderdrift@outlook.com