| Banksia Ridge Bulls Head Junior Sires Lists |
| Banksia Ridge Bulls are prominent in the top 100 Junior sires $Index lists. In fact, a Banksia Ridge bull is at the top of all three $Index lists and for the Export(Long Fed) $Index Banksia Ridge Bulls fill the first 4 places! Two of these bulls are pure bred black Murray Greys. With the modest prices sought for our bulls they represent fantastic value for money for bothe stud and commercial breeders. |
| Licensed Semen from Banksia Ridge Caeser C10 |
Banksia Ridge Caeser is proving to be one of the top sires of the breed as more of his progeny hit the ground. In the latest Breedplan runs Caeser's performance data have moved much closer to that of his sire (Willalooka Uplift) and on the Sire's $Index table there is quite a gap between him and the third best bull. Caeser C10, who is a rising 5 year old has just completed his third year of work and has a lovely temperament to go with his excellent structure and performace. We have decided to have licenced semen collected by Mike Boerema at Embryo Transfer Services, and, if all goes well, will offer this for the first time at the 2012 Murray Grey National sale. Caeser had 5 progeny entered in this year's Royal Adelaide show. Four in the steer competition and one in the under 16 month junior bull section (Farouk F20). All the animals received ribbons. Farouk came second to the junior champion bull. He scanned a 110 sq. cm eye muscle at 550 kg -- by far the biggest muscle on a weight basis of all entries. On hoof one steer came first another second and two came third in classes containing up to 15 enteries. On hook one came 4th out of over 40 in the heavy domestic schools class and another came 4th on hook in the breeders light domestic class. A third had an eye muscle of 99 sq cm at 515 kg , yielded 60% and got the highest muscling points in his class. He suffered overall through lack of sufficient fat cover for the export class. (his high yield tipped him from Heavy Domestic to Export) There are several Caeser bull calves that are looking very promising and include (apart from F20) BNK F25, BNK F37, BNK F44, BNK G14. BNK G26 |
| Calving in Full Swing |
| We retunred from a few weeks in Turkey and Greece to the shock of the cold and dampness of a winter in the Adelaide Hills. The herd is holding condition well - helped substantially by the good quality hay we were able to cut last season. We have about equal numbers of Dapper D9 and Caeser C10 calves on the ground and both groups look great. The heifers are just starting to calve to Diplomnat D37 and the first couple of calves also look very promising. Diplomat D37 and Enterprise E20 have now been sold. Enterprise was bought by Lindsay Murray Grey stud to serve a group of heifers. We wish him well and hope he is able to make a strong contribution to the Lindsay blood-lines. We will again use Caeser C10 as the main bull for our senior cows. He looks magnificent and it was pleasing to seem him checking out the females with such relish when he was introduced into the herd. We plan to use Emperor E32, Flint E8, Franklin F12 and Frederick F13 over the heifers and a few cows. Emperor E32 is growing out well and we still have him listed for sale --- But we expect him to serve a few of our females before he leaves the property. |
| Amazing Season |
| It looks more like spring than early autumn on our property as a result of quite heavy and frequent rain. There is an amazing amoung of green feed available and the herd is thriving. We had strong support at the field day selling 4 bulls to $3,000 and most of the females we had on offer. We have since sold some outstanding unmated Caeser heifers to $1,200
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| Another Carcase Win |
| Banksia Ridge steers were again prominent at the 2010 Royal Adelaide show carcase competition. One steer prepared by Westminster School won its class on the hoof but finished a little off the pace on the hook. This follows the outstanding performance of three Banksia Ridge Bismuth B27 calves in the Royal Adelaide 2010 steer competition. Their carcase scores ranged from 84.82 to 89.895, the latter figure being less than one point lower than the score of the Grand Champion carcase. One of these steers was placed first in his class “on hoof” and was a member of the Murray Grey O’Connor team which placed third overall . The excellent performance of the Banksia Ridge steers was a great follow-up to winning the Champion Light Weight Carcase in the same event in 2008. There are animals for sale at the field day which share the same bloodlines as these award winning steers. |
| July 2010 Update |
| We had a 60% calving rate with our A.I. program which is a little lower than our long term average. While the numbers were down the quality is excellent. None better than Banskia Ridge Flint F8. He's by Willalooka Uplift out of our best cow, Lucy X22. We are planning to use three bulls and no A.I. this year. We aim to bring forward and tighten our calving pattern which, after several year's of continuous A.I., has become rather stretched out . The bulls we plan to use are Dapper D9, Caeser C10 and Diplomat D37 (for heifers) Caeser now has many 2010 drop calves on the ground and they are a fantastic group - averaging a little heavier than we expected at around 40kg. With the exception of one breech delivery, all calves to date (30) have been born unassisted. |
| Semen Sales |
One of the highlights of our year has been the export of a 250 straw semen package to South Africa. The bulls selected were Banksia Ridge Zorro Z7, Banksia Ridge Yttrium Y17 and Banksia Ridge Yogi Bear Y15. The South African breeders are looking to the Banksia Ridge bulls to help lift the quality of their Murray Grey herd.. Mike Boerema from Embryo Transfer Services in Willunga did the original semen collection and helped organise its safe transport to South Africa. The South African export deal follows a larger shipment in previous years to the USA where the progeny form these bulls is in demand.
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