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Welcome to Stokman Angus

We extend an invitation to join us at our 12th annual yearling sale.

Though we are in lockdown at the moment, we feel very lucky to have led a fairly ordinary life for the past year and have enjoyed strong beef and lamb prices, without having the major weather calamities the rest of the world has endured. Looking at the uncertainty and chaos in many parts of the world, our family feels very lucky to firstly be involved in farming in New Zealand, possibly the best place to produce grass fed protein in the world, and secondly, to be raising Angus cattle, the best beef breed in the world.

Our goal has been to breed cattle to do the things cattle were meant to do, calve unassisted, milk, breed back, and grow rapidly while carefully bringing in carcass traits, without losing the traits that have made the Angus cow the most popular beef cow in the world.

Emphasis on the female has always been of utmost importance to us. The quality of the female is the key to a successful breeding program, and from good cows come great bulls.

We calved 250 head of registered Angus cows this spring, and 80 commercial autumn calvers in March, as well as fattening around 200 head of steers and heifers.

There are 100 well grown bulls that will sell on September 15th. We have carcass scanned all our yearling bulls with Austin Ultrasound to get most accurate information we can, and EVERY bull offered for in this sale has passed the BBSE, Bull Fertility Soundness Evaluation with fertility guru, Guy Haynes from Totally Vets. We also value temperament, and have had amazing feedback on how easy the bulls are to work and handle.

40 heifers have been selected from the registered herd, but sell without transfer. These heifers share the same sires as the bulls. The pens of 10 will have AngusPRO indexes available on sale day.

We would like to thank our great team, our son Jake and Craig and Courtney Moyes for their hard work and dedication and the farm and cattle just keep improving under their watch. We also want to thank you, our valued customers, for your trust and confidence in our program. We will continue to utilize very tool available to produce the best Angus cattle we can, combining phenotype, EBV’s, technology and Common Sense.

We look forward to seeing you on our new sale date, September 29th (postponed due to lockdown). If we can be of assistance in any way, please let us know. Always love showing our cattle and the coffee pot is always on if you are over this way!

The AngusPRO index ($PRO) estimates the genetic differences between animals in net profitability per cow joined in a commercial self replacing herd based in New Zealand that targets the production of grass finished steers for the AngusPure programme.

Daughters are retained for breeding and therefore female traits are of importance.

Steers are assumed marketed at approximately 530 kg live weight (290 kg carcase weight with 10 mm P8 fat depth) at 20 months of age, with a significant premium for steers that exhibit superior marbling.

Trait Contributions

Figure 1 shows the traits that are considered in the $PRO index, and how much they contribute to the overall balance of the selection index. The larger the segment, the greater the impact on the selection index.

Selection Advantage

Figure 2 shows the selection advantage if animals are selected using the $PRO index.

The selection advantage is calculated by ranking well used sires within the Angus breed on the $PRO index, and comparing the average EBVs of the sires in the highest 10% with the average EBVs of all sires from which they were selected. For example, the sires ranked in the highest 10% based on the $PRO index had 9 kg higher 400 Day Weight EBVs and 1.2 kg lower Birth Weight EBVs than the average EBVs of the sires from which they were selected.

The selection advantage is indicative of the long term direction and relativity of response that will occur in individual traits if selection is based on the $PRO index. The actual response that is observed will vary depending on the features of the individual breeding program.

A feature of the $PRO index is a selection advantage of close to 0 for mature cow weight, meaning that selection on this index will maintain mature cow weight, while still increasing growth to 200, 400 & 600 days of age.