Our goal is to produce exceptionally high quality genetics from a breed renowned for the following characteristics:
Our farm is situated close to Burgersdorp in the Northern part of the Eastern-Cape province. The Stormberg mountain range forms a large part of our district, and thus our climate is prone to extremes. Our summers are hot, and winters are very cold with temperatures dropping below freezing on a regular basis. The average annual rainfall tends to be 450 mm, although the summer can be dry until late December. The area is known to be a cross-over zone between the Karoo and Free State province, thus our veldt consists of mixed grass and “bossieveld.”
It has taken a few years of research, and a couple of experiments, to decide upon which cattle breed would perform best in our region. Cattle breeding is a long staircase to climb. It takes time and we wanted to be certain that we climbed the correct one. We were looking for a breed of cattle, not only popular at present, but one that would be able to perform as markets and farming methods kept on changing.
People have become more health-conscious than ever before and there is a tendency in other countries for people to insist on organically produced “grass fed beef.” Input costs are rising and farmers need to diversify more, thus reducing the amount of time that they have to devote to their cattle. It was also important to find a breed that would be popular in the current feedlot market system, yet preferably be rounded off from veldt conditions. In this sense, we realised that it would have to be a breed with a finer bone structure, which could produce meat at a faster rate, be able to gain fat mass, as well as having a good muscle-to-bone ratio; a very important factor from a butcher’s point of view..
