News for the week ended 10 October 2003
More Limousin wins in Perth
Congratulations to White Lakes Limousins on winning the "Pen of three heifers"competition at the Perth Royal with a pen of apricot heifers. As Pat Williams reminded me yet again Limousin females are greatly underrated for their maternal abilities. In Pat's words "They are the Angus of the European breeds "
The other success for Limousin was the win by Limousin member James Morris of the Perth Royal junior judging award for the second consecutive year. Congratulations James
Indonesian Interest
A party of seven Indonesians accompanied by Alwyn Wolff and Cameron McDonald from Basin Exports inspected Limousin cattle at the Tanholm and Rosehill Limousin studs near Clifton Qld. on Monday 6 October. They also inspected a small abattoir near Warwick and hopefully saw Limousin carcases in Geoff Haack's butcher shop
The group included the Regent (Governor) and Chairman (Premier) of West Timor and the Regent of the island of Floris
They were extremely impressed with the cattle they saw and are obviously very keen to buy some Limousin bulls.
The current enquiry is for 300 Simbrah and 400 Limousin bulls.
However the rise in the Australian dollar from around 57c to 68.5 c has made the economics very difficult according to Don Moyle of Basin Exports.
The project is to be funded by the central government of Indonesia we understand to gain support for President Megawatti at the next election. The officials from West Timor and Floris will have to go back to the Central government to renegotiate. Hopefully they will look at taking a lower number of bulls at the higher price caused by the rise in the Aust. dollar.
Don Moyle will keep us in touch with further developments should they decide to go ahead with the purchase.
Israel
We had two Israeli buyers in Australia a few weeks ago looking to import young bull calves weighing no more than 230 kg liveweight out of Portland in Victoria in shiploads of about 4000 head. Their wanted Euro breeds and preferably Limousins. These two buyers currently import 1500 mainly Holstein/Friesian bull calves from Turkey each fortnight.The bull calves are grown out in small feedlots to about 400-500 kg. and then slaughtered.
It was obvious from the visit by the two Israeli buyers to Australia that to get the sort of numbers of bull calves they want for the price they want to pay they would need to tap into the Holstein/Friesian bull calf market which is a by product of the two million cow Australian dairy herd and whatever Limousin or Limousin X bull calves they get would be a bonus
During my trip south I visited a calf rearing operation near Colac in Victoria during my trip which rears about 5000 Friesian bull calves per year which are then grown out and mainly sold to Midfield Meats at Warrnambool.
Their system seems very proffessional and is modular so could be expanded if there was long term demand from Israel
I also spoke to a very experienced meat trader/entrepreneur John Burgess who is a partner in the calf rearing/bull production operation and consults to Midfield Meats the Israeli interest
We discussed how we might encourage dairy farmers to use Limousin bulls if the Israeli interest materialises
This will not be easy as dairy farmers are really only interested in getting the cow into production with minimum fuss (easily born calves) with the bull calves being very much a byproduct to the dairy business. I assured him we could provide low birth weight/easy calving Limousin bulls.
There has been no response from the Israelis since they returned home.