Kangaroo Island beef and sheep farmer Tim Buck is a numbers man.
The seventh generation Islander – such a feat is possible when your ancestors were aboard a ship sailed by William Light – always looks to the data first.
“I’m a data man. If an animal doesn’t fit my objectives on data, then I don’t even look at it physically,” Tim says.
“Then I have a set of growth figures, eye muscle and fat figures in my selection criteria.”
So when getting black beef on the ground from a pure Red Angus herd was Tim’s quest, he turned to data – DNA testing – to be certain to get the right Limousin bulls for his operations.
The bulls Tim buys must be homozygous black Limousin, or Buck Pastoral is falling short of its full potential in Tim’s eyes.
“The market demand is for that black coat, and we wanted to meet that market demand,” Tim said.
“At that stage, back six years ago, we were running pure Red Angus.
“We were looking for that black coat and required homo black bulls – bulls carrying two black genes.
“The higher vigour and muscling is a bonus.”
The Buck Pastoral property is a mixed farming operation on 700 hectares west of Parndana, where the sheep flock is being transitioned towards a Highlander maternal-based ewe flock.
The property carries 120 breeding cows and 40 heifers, with the homo black Limousin bulls sourced from Jason and Penny Schulz’s Raven stud at Field.
Red Angus-black Limousin heifers have been retained and worked back into the herd throughout the past six years.
“Jason is not on his own in the field of DNA testing of his stock, but I have a good working relationship with him and he has got the data for me to go to,” Tim said.
With his number one criteria being that a bull must be homo black, the DNA testing delivers the confidence he requires.
But Raven also tests to identify polled animals for those requiring that information and Tim says he also achieves good marbling figures.
“It’s more Jason and Penny and the work they do to get those figures than it is the Limousin to be honest,” he said.
“I had a black Simmental at the start also. There’s a bit better muscling in the Limousin, but for me it comes down to the relationship we have with Jason and Penny and the fact I can see those numbers that I want from their bulls.
“In saying that, those bulls are doing great for us. We’ve added some weight into our program. They’ve just got good depth. Jason’s cattle in particular have good carcase weights.
“The high fat leads to early maturing, they have good muscling, shape and depth and they seem to get good weight into them with good growth rates.”
Tim – who farms with wife Kate, children Emily, 7, and Aiden, 9, along with his parents Bruce and Alison Buck – said he had also identified Raven bulls from the figures that were genuine “curve benders” – their progeny being low birth weight but with high growth rates.
“You can use them over the heifers to make sure your heifers calve down easier but still get good growth rates with those calves,” Tim says. “It gives me the flexibility that I can use that bull over heifers and cows and know that I’m not compromising on growth rates.”
Calving at Buck Pastoral occurs in late March and into April with milk vealers sold off in January, straight off their mums at weights from 350 kilograms to 400kg and straight to feedlots.