Woodlands Red Devon Cattle

 

In 1992,the first registered Devon cows were bought. In 1995, at the Wairata Dispersal Sale, we bought 15 cows with Matahaia bloodlines and a bull, Rotokawa 464 out of the exceptional dam of sires Rotokawa 167. Many of those cows were quite old, but had proved themselves to be good cattle. They were fairly big Devons, with plenty of bone. These cattle have formed the basis of the herd. Since then we have added a few cows and heifers from the Rotokawa herd.

Herd policy has been to build up a few good cow families, achieved by using the best bulls available, by performance recording and by rigorous culling.These cow families have given us a platform for improvement in the future.

In recent years cows have been inseminated with Austalaian and UK sourced semen to provide outcross genetics in the form of young bulls out of our best cows.

The entire herd has been recorded on Breedplan for 5 years and valuable information has emerged, allowing confident decisions to be made when selecting buls for heifer mating and for sale to other cattle breeders. 

Heifers that have achieved a weight of 320kg or more are mated as yearlings to calve at 2 years.Surplus heifers of the same quality are sold to other breeders,the remainder are sold prime.

A few of the best bull calves are kept entire each year for sale to other breeders and for use over our own herd.The remainder are steered with about half being sold as stores as yearlings and the remainder sold prime at between 17 to 20 months of age.