For the third year in a row, the Farmer’s Weekly-ARC Best Elite South Devon Cow comes from Attie du Plessis’s Aduvon South stud on the farm Welgevonden near Coligny in North West. She is 93 09, an Appendix A South cow, and has produced three more calves than her official records indicate, as her performance only started being recorded with her fourth calf when Attie joined the National Beef Cattle Recording and Improvement Scheme. C 93 09’s sire was CFLR 92 2 from the Carel le Roux herd, while her dam was an unregistered commercial cow included with those that Attie originally bought as basis cows to start his herd. ttie retained AC 93 09 in his herd because she was one of his best breeding cows and has calved 11 times. She is currently pregnant with her 12th (ninth recorded) calf. O f her eight recorded calves, three were bull calves and five were heifers.
All were good calves but, as explains, none were really exceptional. Altogether six calves have been approved for registration, three heifers and the bull calf born in 2006 have been retained in the herd. One calf has been culled, while none have died. Typical dual-purpose cow ttie calls AC 93 09 “a good functional breeding cow with excellent udder and teat placement, and excellent maternal and milk production qualities. typical dual-purpose cow.” H is South stud herd currently consists of 65 cows and 15 pregnant heifers. He uses four herd sires, three for cows and one for heifers, and is building numbers, retaining as many females as possible. Because he puts in more than he takes out, the average age of his cows is quite high. He has two single-sire breeding herds of 35 females per bull, first using semen of two bulls to inseminate the 25% best cows and all the heifers, then putting in two other bulls to clean up. Convincing natural conception Conception rate per 100 females mated by natural service is 90%, and by AI 60% (cows) and 65% (heifers). Heifers that don’t conceive are culled. T he average age at first mating is 29 to 30 months, with breeding seasons that last for 2,5 to three months, to four months during a bad drought.
Breeding season for heifers is from September/October to 15 November, and for cows from October/November to December. The herd’s average intercalving period for the last three seasons is an impressive 386 days, and its average weaning weights for the last three seasons are 265kg for heifers and 280kg for bull calves. Because the average cow in the Aduvon herd easily gives eight calves before she is culled, many of the older cows contribute to building numbers in the herd. Attie uses a summer phosphate lick at the ratio of one bag Voermol Super 18 : one bag salt : one bag P12; and in winter a Dundee protein lick concentrate with salt at the ratio of 5:8. For at least four months in winter cattle and sheep are run on maize stover with licks. Of the main cattle diseases prevalent in the area, anaplasmosis is the most important. Lumpy skin disease is an occasional problem, but no other diseases, including heartwater and redwater, are prevalent in the area. Top cows, excellent bulls Attie has flushed embryos from exceptional cows in cooperation with Embryo Plus, including previous Farmer’s Weekly award cows inseminated with an imported Australian polled bull’s semen. The result is the Vleissentraal-ARC Special Performance Test Class Phase C South Devon Bull for 2007, AC 05 036. Because records are required by the scheme, which are kept in the herd book, Attie has also purchased the BeefPro computer programme and will soon start using it.
All animals are tattooed for individual identification and archived DNA samples are kept for management purposes, such as paternity determination. Annual beef production includes 75% of weaned bull calves and 25% of weaned heifers that are sold, in addition to culled breeding animals. Slaughter stock is either sold at local auctions or at the Coligny abattoir. When asked how he got started Attie says, “It is a family farming enterprise. My father Daan, brother Flippie and I each have our own enterprise. We have a common dairy operation and cooperate in crop production. Why this breed? “When I was a boy I saw South Devon cows on a neighbour’s farm and decided I wanted to farm with those one day. I obtained a small herd of 13 commercial cows from Frik Oberholzer when I was 21, and augmented these with good breeding stock from the lines I wanted, from breeders such as Carel le Roux, Luther Wessels, Casper Claassen, Wilma van Beek and John Miller, and I built up my herd through breeding during the past seven years.” Contact Attie du Plessis on (018) 673 2180, or e-mail [email protected]. |fw
Geography on Welgevonden
Total land holding (ha): 462ha plus 100ha leased cropland. Land type: gently undulating plains. Natural surface water is a vlei that feeds the dam for irrigation and boreholes. Rainfall (long-term average): 550mm per year. Soil type(s): variable sandy loam. Natural vegetation (Acocks Veld Type): Cymbopogon-Themeda Veld. Area under annual cash crops consists of 50ha irrigated monocropped maize, 200ha rainfed monocropped maize, 50ha annual rainfed fodder crop (teff and cowpeas in rotation), 2ha irrigated oats, rye or ryegrass pasture. Six camps totalling 250ha rainfed smuts finger grass are grazed in rotation, with one used as spare for winter. Natural veld grazing totals 60ha in three long camps – a vlei camp, and one strip on either side. The main water source is a borehole fed by a vlei and storage dam. The farming divisions in the enterprise and the percentage of total farming income from each: cattle (mostly) and sheep 25%, crops 75% (50:50 irrigated and rainfed).
