The 1163 hectare Lake Station is owned by Malcolm and Ingrid McConachie, and Doug and Jane McConachie. They operate a straight breed Hereford beef operation on an effective area of 990 hectares, with the balance of the property in native bush and pine plantation, including 8 hectares of Douglas Fir.
Situated on the Upper Buller plain on both sides of Highway 63 and 10 kms from St Arnaud, it has roughly 75% flat developed pasture with 15% flat undeveloped river terrace with 10% hill side and native forest.
An altitude of 500m can attract 1,600-18,000mm of rain annually with heavy frosts from -7 to -8C not unusual, with about three snowfalls each winter. The property is subdivided into 106 paddocks, of which 76 have tough water, 25 have natural water access, and the remaining 5 are dry.
Improved pasture consists of white and red clover, non-endophyte ryegrass, cocksfoot, timothy, chocory and plantain mixes. Winter feed in the form of 450kg bales includes 1,000 bales of baleage and 2,500 bales of hay, in addition to 50 hectares of kale, turnips, swede mix and 10 hectares of an oats and H1 mix.
Lake Station is committed to an objective of producing bulls that will breed steers that finish 300kg carcass weights at 18 months of age, and with females that annually rear a top calf. To test the bull breeding programme they run a straight breed commercial cow herd. All the calves are tagged at birth and registered males are left entire and all commercial males castrated at birth, with only registered bulls being run on the property.
All females are pregnancy tested using ultrasound scanning at the end of February, no longer than 90 days after they have been put to the bull, enabling the separation into three calving groups; early, mid and late calvers. This means smaller mobs to supervise at calving time, and better utilisation of available feed resources. An added bonus is early identification of twin bearing cows making management easier.
The results of their breeding programme have seen average weaning weights for bulls at 327kg, steers at 309kg and heifers at 298kg.
The McConachies are strong believers in objective measurements and performance recording, and have found Breedplan to be a very valuable tool in the Hereford stud to select traits that will produce progeny able to convert grass to premium carcasses. They are constantly testing their breeding programme by using the stud sires and their offspring in the commercial herd, and using the feedback from meat companies as a barometer for progress in their breeding programme.
