Craig Marwick of Little Harmony Santa Gertrudis Stud produced this year’s Farmer’s Weekly-ARC Best Elite Cow. Added to this he has won the Absa-ARC Beef Cattle Improvement Scheme Herd of the Year Award four years in a row. Lloyd Phillips reports.
The Little Harmony Santa Gertrudis Stud, on Little Farm outside Richmond in KZN, is one of the best managed beef herds in South Africa. In fact, this stud won the Absa-ARC Beef Cattle Improvement Scheme Herd of the Year Award for four years in a row, up to and including 2004. To put the cherry on top of these illustrious accolades, Little Harmony’s Santa Gertrudis cow, LH95 00 25, is the 2007 Farmer’s Weekly-ARC Best Elite Santa Gertrudis Cow. However, as the stud’s owner/manager Craig Marwick points out, getting the best out of beef cows requires testing their production limits and getting rid of animals that do not meet the stringent criteria. H aving farmed on Little since 1978, Craig says that he and his brother Evan decided to breed stud Santa Gertrudis from the early 1980s because they are three-eighths Brahman and five-eighths Shorthorn. The best of both worlds “Brahman genetics give our animals hardiness while the Shorthorn genetics provide excellent growth and mothering abilities,” Craig says. “These factors guarantee heavier average weaner weights than for most other beef breeds.
Santa Gertrudis also have excellent feed conversion on both grass and grain diets, which is what Evan and I focus on to get the most out of our cows. Top feed conversion efficiency results in more cost-effective animals for our beef enterprise.” O n Little Harmony Craig and run a 250-cow Santa Gertrudis stud herd, 340ha of sugarcane, 200ha of eucalyptus and wattle plantations, 30ha of maize and 120ha of rainfed kikuyu pastures on which the beef herd grazes. Craig mainly concentrates on running the beef and maize, while focuses on the sugarcane and timber. Breeding some of the best Through the brothers’ selection process, Little Harmony Stud has generated a number of Elite, Superior and Excellent cows, proving to the Marwicks that their animals are above-average within the Santa Gertrudis breed as well. Craig says his ideal cow must give a small calf averaging 36kg at birth and a weaner that weighs 250kg to 270kg at 205 days.
Impressively, Craig has managed to rear weaners at a phenomenal 340kg at 205 days. “We aim for medium-framed animals because larger animals need more feed to maintain themselves,” Craig explains. “Our high stocking rates of seven heifers per hectare are better suited to medium animals as larger animals tend to cull themselves in performance. We also prefer medium-maturing cows, and breed our heifers at 27 months of age whereafter they will have their first calves at three years of age. This allows these heifers to deal with the stresses of pregnancy, calving, producing milk for the calves, and then conceiving again.” While the Marwicks like cows with good temperament, they also prefer the animals to have at least some aggression to be good mothers and to protect their calves from predators and stock thieves. Craig does not want cows that are difficult to handle.
Looking to the future Craig’s eventual intention is to have a stud of polled animals so that dehorning is unnecessary. He says that the Santa Gertrudis breed in SA has fantastic genetic material available for use in the Little Harmony Stud herd – in fact Craig feels that genetics are on par with the best in the world. E ach year Craig selects 70 replacement heifers and 30 bulls from his calf crop. Due to his stud’s short breeding season (21 November to 6 December) the herd’s conception rate averages from 85% to just over 90%. A season’s calf crop is weaned together as one group. Once weaned, the bull and heifer calves are separated. Any heifers below a growth index of 90 are placed in the on-farm feedlot, while the 20 to 30 selected bull calves are put through long Phase D testing.
The remaining bull calves are also sent to the on-farm feedlot while some of the selected bulls are sent to Cedara for Phase C testing. The replacement heifers are run on kikuyu foggage through winter and are then moved onto kikuyu pastures throughout summer. In their second winter these heifers will be put on maize stover. They are then mated on kikuyu pasture in single sire herds of 20 to 30 females in each. The mature cows are matched up in herds based on their estimated breeding values, and the best bulls are selected to improve the respective traits of each of these herds. Feeding the best bull calves “Our selected bull calves are long Phase D tested on kikuyu pastures from 12 to 18 months of age,” Craig says. “After that they are fed Voermol SB100 Mix concentrate at 1% of their body weight every day until they are either sold out-of-hand or when they are used on our cows. We heavily cull our bulls for the slightest defect.
However, we generally tend to keep about 12 two-year-old bulls for use in our herd, while the rest are sold at three years old.” Little Harmony Stud allocates eight kikuyu camps to each of its cow herds. These herds rotate from one camp to the next every eight days during summer. However, in winter, the cows are fed on sugarcane tops supplemented with a Voermol Dundee lick that provides them with added protein and trace minerals. Contact Craig Marwick on (033) 212 2918, 082 825 7399 or e-mail [email protected]. |fw
