Breeding & Genetics
ANGUS
Three generations of the Sherriff family have been breeding registered Angus cattle in New Zealand spanning nearly 100 years.
Philsons reasons for going into Angus: (1) an opportunity cropped up and (2) he had always enjoyed helping his father working with cattle as a boy.
Larry Sherriff founded the Kowhiwhi Stud in 1926 in the hills of Mokai, east of Taihape. The herd was built up from cows purchased from Gwavas, Akito, Gladbrook, Tautane, Mangatoro and Waitaria - leading herds at the time. Akito sires were used consistently throughout.
He spent 21 years on the Angus Council, seven of those as President and produced the Champion Bull at the National Angus Sale in 1937 for a record price at the time for a bull sold in NZ.
Philson Sherriff founded the Pine Park stud in 1969 in partnership with Bernard Edgecombe, a Dalgety’s stud stock agent, with 30 females purchased at the Edgecombe family’s ‘Oaklea’ dispersal sale held in Dannevirke. The partnership was dissolved in 1979 after which Philson added top females to the Pine Park herd from renowned stud dispersals: Wharakouka (Napier), Hope House (Te Kuiti), Inniscreag (coromandel), Kai Iwi (Wanganui), and Glendale (Taihape). For several years bulls were sold privately on farm.
The key foundation, ‘Archer of Southwold’ purchase and a partnership with the Waione stud - his sire Massive of Kaharau exported to North America, while his Akito dam from the Dannevirke stud was sold to Australian interests. Sound, robust, and extremely fertile, excellent temperament and productive, Archer was used at pine park across the various groups of cows purchased while consolidating the herd base until he was 14 years old. He retained all his admirable traits throughout his entire life and only had two dry cows at Pine Park in 12 years of breeding. Archer provided a consistent and uniform impact building up ‘easy calving and do-ability’ females with ‘great longevity’, breeding bulls capable of ‘shifting and producing well on all classes of Central North Island and East Coast hill country’.
One early brought-in sire as a five year old, ‘Kiln of Cricklewood’, had Pine Park bred sons take out first, second, and third placings at the Wanganui-Manawatu Bull test station in the same year during the 1980’s.
The herd was shifted from Marton to Kowhiwhi in Taihape in 1979 and bulls were then sold at the combined ‘Taihape Beef Breeders Bull Sale’ for the next 23 years. A Pine Park bull sold for $13,000 to the Ranui Stud in the late 1990s, an all-time-ever record price for the Taihape Sale.
With a stud well underway, ‘Waitapu Enterprises ET AB’, the first son of USA Angus sire Pine Drive Big Sky to sell in NZ, was the most influential brought-in sire amongst some good ones purchased over the following years to continue to stabilise the cow herd in its un-pampered competitive environment.
Kowhiwhi was sold in 1990, the cows returned to a newly purchased property nor-west of Marton. Bulls continued to be sold at Taihape until 2001 and from then on, Pine Park bull sales have been successfully held annually on-farm at Pine Park.
The most influential bull produced in the Pine Park herd over this period of time was an AB (artificially bred) son ‘Pine Park Yes Yes 271’ Sired by one of the bets bulls to ever come our of America to New Zealand, ‘GT Maximum’, out of the best cow we ever purchased at dispersal sales – ‘Inniscreag 675’. Afetr using Yes Yes across 40 females as a yearing, we was then sold as a rising two year old at the 1995 National Angus Sale to the Shian Stud, Taumaranui, where he added value for years to come. 24 New Zealand studs – including Pine Park, used his semen with long lasting productive results.
Edward took over the reigns in 2004 and has continued to build up the stud and bull sale numbers to this day.
COOPWORTH SHEEP
The Coopworth stud was registered in 1968 following the inaugural meeting of the newly formed Coopworth Sheep Society of New Zealand. The first Pine Park Coopworth ewes were passed for registration in 1969.
The reasons for Philsons interest in being part of forming this new breed were due to dissatisfaction with Romney sheep, which, due to years of almost total emphasis on wool production had low lambing percentage, lost good mothering ability, needed constant eye-wigging due to world blindness and required endless attention to foot rot and foot trimming.
From the beginning, all stock have been performance recorded. First on the old MAF’s National Flock Recording Scheme, following on to Sheeplan in 1976 and replaced by SIL in 1999.
Prior to this, Philson had established a purebred Border Leicester stud and used homebred offspring across the commercial ewe flock. A shocking eczema season, however, wiped out the BL ewes, hence the move in thinking to stabilise the cross and work on breeding eczema-tolerant sheep.
By 1968 Philson had been selling first-cross Border Leicester x Romney Rams for five years and was already starting to stabilise the cross by mating the best performance recorded crossbred Rams to the soundest, most productive crossbred ewes. Emphasis was placed on good mothering ability, robustness, soundness - especially where feet, teeth, wool and temperament were concerned, while recording sorted out the top producers for growth and wool weight.
One ‘must’ was instilled right from the beginning into the whole breeding concept and mission process, was that all groups of sheep were to be run together at all times along commercial management lines – no favoured individual treatment or pampering. A key breeding plank adhered to till this day.
The early registered ewes were derived from three sources: Aged ewes from the famous Leedstown Romney stud dispersal, the best performance-recorded ewes from commercial ewes purchased annually from Homewood Station in the Wairarapa and 60 registered Coopworth mixed-age ewes from the Dunlop’s South Canterbury ‘Brenley’ stud (flock 2) upon its dispersal in the 1970’s.
Brought-in registered sires from other studs to help advance productivity in the Pine Park flock were Brenley 50/69, Puketauru 181/71 and Valley 394/74, the latter breeding several sons retained for home use and earned over $576,000 (in today’s money) from the sale of his progeny.
Over the ensuing years, registered ewe numbers built up steadily. A second stud – ‘Kowhiwhi’ – was established on the old Sherriff hill property out of Taihape and when ewe numbers peaked to over 70 million in NZ in the late 1970’s, Pine Park was selling close to 400 rams per year throughout New Zealand.
Over the Breed’s establishment and consolidation years, Pine Park sold over 160 registered stud ramps to 80 Coopworth Studs. Pine Park also set a record price of $8,500 for a Coopworth ram sold at the North Island Stud Ram Fair in 1981 which stands to this day.
SUFTEX
The initial base of the Sufftex flock started in 1980 when Philson purchased an entire purebred Suffolk flock of 80 ewes from a Mr Scown, farmed on steep Stratford hills. These sheep had never had feet touched, were extremely active and fit and had been exposed to facial eczema for years (and had built up natural immunity). Breeding purebred Suffolk rams to sell was the main aim in the early days - to offer existing ram clients a complete breeding package to go with the Coopworth’s.
The Wiltshire’s added hardiness and excellent meat qualities to the mix and were considerably quieter to handle. This cross proved to be a quality meat producing sheep. However, due to the Wiltshire’s shedding wool, we looked towards the Texel breed about to come to NZ.
Pine Park took out shares as a breeding group member of the Government run scheme importing the first Texel semen, with the first release of sheep in 1990. Texel rams were used consistently over the Wiltshire/Suffolk cross ewes and purebred Suffolks to develop ‘Sufftex’. Poll Dorset rams were also used in the mix. The use of these four base-breeds utilised the best meat producing sheep breeds in the country.
Stabilisation was achieved using the best meat producing home-bred rams of the various crosses; performance-recording along with eye/soundness appraisal sorting out the exceptional rams for use. No fixed rules are in place to produce Sufftex and all new meat breeds and improved strains of the breeds already in use – especially where new Texel variants are imported – are carefully analysed for possible introduction if value can be seen.
OTHER CROSSES
Once the virtues of the Texel imports became apparent, opportunities and client requests led on to producing Texel x Coopworth and Texel x Poll Dorset rams for sale on a smaller scale as demand dictated. Both crosses sell well on today’s market.​
During the boom years that followed, ten separate export orders overseas saw females exported to the USA and Romania, while both registered stud and flock rams were sold into four states of Australia.
For the past 21 years, coinciding with the huge improvement in Romney’s fertility and easy-care aspects, several very top performance-recorded, high facial eczema tolerant Romney rams have been used in the Coopworth flock breeding programme, helping to introduce new genes.