Speckle Park cattle garner attention

Dairy farm manager Mark Tiller and son Manaia spend some time with their Aniwaniwa Speckle Park Stud cattle at Pomahaka, near Gore. Photo / Yvonne O'Hara

Mark and Lesley Tiller's Speckle Park cattle provided a talking point at the shows they attended last year.

Originally from the North Island, the couple, who have two children, Manaia (8) and Tia (14), have 17 of the purebred beef animals under the Aniwaniwa Stud name.

They include two stud bulls and several calves, with seven cows to breed next season.

Their animals did well at the Gore, South Otago and West Otago A&P shows, as well as winning the Canterbury A&P Show's "Two-year-old interbreed champion" section last year.

"We also won the supreme beef animal title at the West Otago show, and a calf won the calf section," Mr Tiller said.

Mr Tiller manages a 640ha, 1500-cow dairy farm for Blue Mountain Dairies at Pomahaka, which has a milk-solids target of 500,000kg. He oversees the property with the help of several Nepalese employees.

The couple also run the stud on the dairy farm. Their interest in the polled beef breed started in 2013, when they bought six embryos from breeder Mark MacKenzie, of Maungahina Stud, in the North Island, as a trial.

"They were something a bit different and the calves did well," Mr Tiller said.

"They are higher yielding, with a consistent yield of 68% to 70% [on average].

"The calves are good doers, and quickly get up off the ground.

"The cows have good mothering ability and most calve easily and quickly."

The calves always had the distinctive markings and attracted a lot of interest.

The couple were keen to buy or lease about 40ha (100 acres) in West Otago where they could base their stud as they hoped to run about 100 animals eventually, Mr Tiller said.

They were planning to travel to Canada in March to look at new genetics.

Speckle Park

They are polled and are a moderate-sized beef breed.

• First crossed in the 1950s in Saskatchewan, Canada using British White Park, shorthorn and Angus cattle.

• They arrived in New Zealand in 2007.

• Mature cows can weigh up to 850kg and bulls can reach 1000kg or more.

• Calves can weigh up to 40kg at birth.

• They have three colour patterns: speckled, leopard and white with black points. Sometimes they have black calves.