“We’ve been round the alphabet twice now,” Karoonda Hereford stud principal, Paul Sykes said, standing in a paddock of rye grass and clover, eyeing off some of his stud bulls that are up for sale in March at Gelantipy.
He’s referring to their names.
This year’s sale bulls begin with the letter A, all 80 to 90 head of them.
Andy. Atlantis. Altitude. And the list goes on – and on.
Which, given there are 26 letters in the alphabet, adds up to a 53-year tradition of stud cattle, as Paul’s first calves were assigned names with the letter A back when he was 21.
“Some studs follow sire lines but while the bull is part of the program, it’s the females that are the major part,” Paul said.
“So many of our best animals all trace back to the same wonderful cow lines.
“People might think they can fix a stud overnight with a couple of good bulls, but it takes a lot longer unless you have good females.
“We focus heavily on the female side.”
The Sykes also take that ethos and use it when buying bulls for themselves.
“If we’re buying a bull, we want to see the mother,” Paul said.
“We don’t believe the milk figures and we want to see the udders for ourselves.”
It was 1994, 30 years ago, the Karoonda Sykes had their first on-property bull sale at Karoonda Park, offering 16 bulls.
Prior to that they sent half a dozen bulls to sell alongside Mawarra Herefords at the annual White Face sale in Bairnsdale for years.
“We often went shares in bulls with Mawarra, Ardno Lilydale was one of them,” Paul remembers.
Paul’s 21st present from his older brother, Robert Sykes at Mawarra stud, was a bull called Mawarra Emporer, by Ardno Inspiration who was by Vern Imperious, one of two bulls imported from England by Ralph McEachern.
“It was a big deal to import a bull back then.”
He then got some wire from his father to make some fences and went on from there.
Paul and his wife Judi started their stud with Mawarra and Ardno blood, which they’ve since grown to about 400 breeders.
To build their female line, the Sykes selected cows from many different studs, including Hobartville stud, Moore Park at Bowral, New South Wales, some Maritana cows from Curlew stud near Albury/Wodonga, and some Lowanna stud cows and a Last Day cow, their origin from Laurie Platt at Bombala.
These days the Sykes have daughter Lauren and her husband Lynton Hill working beside them, as well as their three children, Campbell, eight, Lexi, six, and Audrey, three.
The family also runs an adventure and accommodation business from Karoonda Park, Gelantipy.
BULLS THE RIGHT TYPE
“The phenotype has to be right,” Paul said, in regard to picking bulls.
“Over the past 10 years it’s become more obvious that breeders are chasing intramuscular fat (IMF) but in some cases this has meant the carcase weight average and eye muscle area (EMA) has gone down.”
“We support a focus on IMF but you still need carcase and yield,” Lauren said.
“A balance between muscle, marbling and weight for age.”
“If you have a really high-IMF you may drop the beef off them,” Paul said.
One of their sale picks is Karoonda Alpine, who is out of a good cow, with high milk and high IMF figures but it’s his physique they appreciate.
“Cosmetically there’s not much wrong with him,” Paul said.
“We’ve sharpened the knives on them.
“We have a high standard.”
The Sykes say they usually breed polled cows to polled bulls and horned cows to horned bulls, and have about a dozen homozygous poll bulls in the crop of sale bulls.
“All our bulls have been genomically tested,” Lauren said.
“This year there are 24 reference sires, a real mix of horned and polled genetics.”
Paul said you “won’t always find what you want” in a homozygous bull and that being homozygous is not a guarantee you won’t breed cattle with scurs.
“We look for the right product and if they are homozygous that’s a bonus,” he said.
“Even Techno, a homozygous New Zealand bull we’ve used has produced cattle with scurs.”
The Sykes’ bulls have a reputation of being particularly quiet in nature.
“We used to tie every sale bull up with a halter after weaning,” Lauren said.
“We don’t anymore, and we don’t do anything too special to make them quiet, we’re just pretty hard on temperament.”
“All the cranky females are gone,” Paul added.
They feed grass pellets over the winter, which can often be harsh with snow falling, quietening them and keeping their nutrition level even, so they’re “going forward all the time”.
“They’re doing two kilos a day on grass now in January,” he said.
The Sykes are always on the lookout for outcross sires and use a large artificial insemination program at the stud.
They are eagerly awaiting the first calves from Glendan Park Shrek in March, a bull Paul says is “a pretty useful bull”.
They have also purchased horned bulls Glenwarrah Marshall and Lotus Syndicate, from Northern NSW and have shares in another New Zealand bull, Limehills Belter (PP).
“You’ve got to like what you breed,” Paul said.
“I guess that’s what keeps us going.”
“When you see those nice even pens of calves at the calf sales that are by our bulls, that’s a reward in itself,” Lauren said.
Karoonda Hereford stud will open on Monday, January 29, as part of Beef Week, and the 30th annual on-property sale will take place on Tuesday, March 19.
The bulls are sold traditionally, with an auctioneer and the bulls walking through the sale ring, but the sale is also interfaced with AuctionsPlus and each lot will have a video online.
