A BALMATTUM Angus stud took full advantage of this month's Beef Week travelling exhibition to show off the fine breeding of their herd's bloodlines on Tuesday, 4 February. Bellaspur Angus principal Brenton Sessions said he was looking forward to the stud's annual bull sale on Thursday, 20 March where he will be offering 35 registered eighteen-month-old bulls on the family farm he runs with his parents on site, partner, and three children. The bulls are from leading sires HF Safe & Sound 019, Landfall New Ground N90, and Absolute New Ground R61. "We have had pretty good sales very much on trend with the market," Mr Sessions said. "The old 'pen of six' rule-of-thumb I heard many years ago seems to work." Mr Sessions said the traditional 'rule' was that a young bull should sell for the same price as a pen of six steers of its progeny. "I looked at the numbers of that over the last five years and it correlates spot on," he said. "We averaged just shy of it. "That tells me that our client base is very real world and we have farmers in there that are trying to make a living out of our genetics." Mr Sessions said the stud's open day for Beef Week drew more outsiders than locals. "The day was very good, about forty people came," he said. "The weather was pretty ordinary but as is expected with that, not too many locals ventured out but a lot of people on the Beef Week circuit popped in. "We had good inquiries from new operations about outsourcing genetics." Due to the dry season, Mr Sessions said he had all his cows agisting at present in the western Riverina and at Yea. He said that although he had chased certain cows for their lineage earlier on when a breeder, he has largely used the last 14 years to build up numbers. "Breeding mainly for me is that the point of difference is probably wanting that overall breed conformation and true-to-type Angus with a good Angus head," he said. "And still have the performance to stand up in the weaner markets."
