Team Te Mania Angus: Genetic and financial gains through commercial alliance

Renowned stud breeders Te Mania Angus are capitalising on the ultimate symbiotic relationship with their commercial clients.

Operating at the top of their game, renowned stud breeders Te Mania Angus are capitalising on the ultimate symbiotic relationship with their commercial clients.

Established in 1995, the Team Te Mania program creates a direct line of feedback between the stud and their commercial producers to give more confidence in both breeding programs, with the ultimate goal to increase profitability.

“We had a number of our really loyal clients who were recording commercial information and we thought ‘why not formalise it?’,” Te Mania stud principal Hamish McFarlane said.

Team Te Mania members benefit from access to the latest stud genetics through a bull leasing program.

“In simple terms, we subsidise the cost of genetics to our Team TeMania members and in return we get back information in the commercial sphere on those genetics that are supplied to them,” Hamish said.

Tom Gubbins and Hamish McFarlane picture at a Te Mania Angus bull sale. Photo: Chloe Smith

Bulls are subsidised to Team Te Mania herds by way of a three-year lease contract paid in six-monthly instalments.

Currently Team members pay $2160 every half year for the lease of one bull, which equates to about $12,000 in total over three years.

Te Mania also collects an additional levy from the producers which pays for the collection of all of the commercial information on the progeny of each leased sire.

“We allocate the sires to each of the herds; we do the genetic programming and tell them what we think will benefit them most going forward,” Hamish said.

“We take the risk of it out I suppose, whereas if they were to buy at our sale, it might not suit their program or it might be beyond their price bracket.”

In Te Mania’s most recent sale at Walgett, NSW, they topped at $65,000 for 114 bulls which sold to full clearance to average $24,394.

“Where we set ourselves apart from other sales is that we’re collecting a lot of commercial information which goes in to give those genetics that we supply a little bit more predictability,” Hamish said.

Currently, there are 43 Team Te Mania herds operating across South Australia, Victoria and throughout NSW.

The Team herds are split into ‘Progeny Test herds’ and ‘Production herds’, with the former being registered with the Angus Society and submitting performance data to Breedplan.

“Within the group, there’s 10 progeny herds and the other 33 are straight commercial herds which we still collect data from but its not for any genetic evaluation purposes at this point,” Hamish said.

Team Te Mania producers are mainly targeting the long-fed feedlot market with 200-plus days on feed which Hamish said offers “a definite premium”.

“That market is primarily for export – they’re looking for high marbling traits and eating quality rather than volume,” Hamish said.

The two main feedlots operating for long-fed production being Japanese owned Rangers Valley, Glen Innes, NSW and Stockyard Beef Kerwee feedlot at Jondaryan, Queensland.

“We also have a workshop each year where we get all the team members together and present them with what is happening in the market that they may need to be aware of,” he said.