No-bull bulls, lame cow pay off for stud founder
Veteran Angus breeder to step back from active role
At 82 Jon Pattison Secretary/Treasurer of Hawke’s Bay Angus is stepping down and handing over his duties to Rachel O’Grady.
Jon’s father, the late Ted (Edmund) Pattison, was a stud bull farmer in Wairoa. One year Ted bought some older Angus studs from Mr Jefferson in Wairoa.
There was one slightly lame cow amongst the bulls and 9-year-old Jon was given the cow which, he says, started him off in the “stud game” and at one stage much later on he had 160 stud cows and 400 stud Perendales.
Jon enjoyed accountancy at school and did his own books for the business but never took it up as a profession as “I couldn’t stand being indoors”.
Currently he looks after the accounts for Hawke’s Bay Angus and arranges advertising for the group in two specialised stud catalogues.
After 49 years in the Wairoa district Jon decided to try his luck in Hawke’s Bay and established Kahuitara Angus Stud in Waipukurau where he carried 600 stock units of cattle to 400 stock units of sheep.
In 2006 the stud was sold and in 2018 the farm sold. Stock were dispersed all over New Zealand and some even went to Chile. Jon moved to Havelock North.
He says that, at 82, his body is “too knackered” by too much rugby and too much cattle handling to continue farming.
Jon learned a lot from the late Don Borke over 40 years. “If you asked a question you’d get an honest answer,” he says. “Don told me once that stud breeding is 24/7. Thank God, otherwise everybody would be in it. It’s the part that drives me — once you get into it, it’s so interesting. There’s not a lot I haven’t done on the stud scene.
“Stud breeding gets to you at some stage. It’s a different life, it upgrades and improves your farming. You look at how animals perform, what’s wrong with them, look at their weight gains . . . you’re doing all this sort of thing years ago that commercial farmers are starting to do now, but you’ll still see good farmers go and buy a bull and structurally it’s incorrect.”
There’s quite a bit of homework that needs to be done before the sales.
“Every year, and year by year, you see slight improvements. The major selling points in the Bay are the climate, the type of country and the fertility in Hawke’s Bay. You can usually find what you’re looking for within your area and you’re never 100 per cent sure how they are going to do if you do buy out of the area. You have wins and losses.”