Catlins farm mix of beef and bush
Rob Tipa talks to a farmer with an unusual cattle breed that returns more money than other breeds for the same feed input.
Cattle have been a critical development tool for three generations of the Gray family in breaking in steep, bush-clad hill country in the Katea Valley of the Catlins.
In farming circles, the Catlins is known for producing good cattle that thrive on rugged tussock and bush-covered blocks in a district renowned for some of the largest stands of remnant native bush left on the east coast of the South Island.
Barry Gray has a passion for both. He breeds maine-anjou beef cattle and is replanting native bush in shelter belts on his sheep and beef farm, parts of which overlook Owaka and the Catlins coast.
He has chaired the OtagoSouthland Beef Carcass Competition since the mid 1990s and also chairs the South Otago Farm Forestry Association, historically one of the strongest branches in the country.
The family’s original 141-acre farm in the Katea Valley was carved from the bush by Gray’s grandfather Thomas, who pitched a tent on the side of the road because it was the only clear ground on the block he bought in 1896.
Up until the early 1960s, cows were milked on the property through a six-stand milking shed, supplying milk to the Katea Dairy factory a few miles up the valley.
Gray left school in 1975 to help his father Ivan on the home farm and, when his father died in 1981, he took over as manager. He farmed in partnership with his brother Kevin until 1989, when they split up to pursue their own directions in farming.
Since then he has steadily expanded the original Graylands property to its current 570ha (about 456ha effective) with the purchase of three neighbouring blocks. About 22ha of the farm is now planted out in pockets of farm forestry - pine, macrocarpa and eucalypts - and the rest is in native bush and scrub.
Beef cattle have always been an important development tool on the farm.
His father ran a mix of hereford, friesian, angus and simmental cross cattle and initially Gray continued with the simmental breed, which he says ‘‘left the traditional breeds for dead’’.
His introduction to the maineanjou breed was more by accident than design.
‘‘I had a mate who bred maineanjou cattle and he’d been kidding me to try them for a few years,’’ he recalls. One year he had five simmental-hereford-angus cross cows whose mating was unsuccessful.
The French breed had performed well in trials in North America, placed well in beef competitions and had good growth rates.
‘‘So I borrowed a bull from a breeder to put across a handful of cattle for two or three years and ended up buying them because they proved their worth and were another step ahead of simmentals.’’
In the 1980s one of his maineanjou steers was placed third in the Otago A&P show beef competition, his first taste of success and the highest-placed young farmer in that contest.
He has continued experimenting with artificial insemination of a few cows every year to different exotic cattle breeds - including gelbvieh, piedmontese, belgian blue and limousin - and has entered the progeny in beef competitions to see how they performed against each other.
Today his 83 breeding cows are a mix of maine-anjou, murray grey, belgian blue, south devon, hereford and gelbvieh bloodlines.
His other great passion is for farm forestry, planting a diverse range of exotic and native trees and shrubs to create a network of shelter across the farm.
The original home farm lies to the south, with exposed faces and steep gullies. After one smothering incident in which they lost 20 sheep in a steep gully, they fenced it off and planted it in pines.
Gray and his brother experimented with different native species to see which ones would survive. One of their first shelter belts planted with multiple native species was visible from the family home, had an east-west aspect with power lines overhead and some of the farm’s flattest hay paddocks on either side.
‘‘My initial approach was to plant different shapes, colours and sizes of trees,’’ Gray says.
‘‘I just wanted the variation and I ran with what survived. It was whatever species I could see would give shelter value in that height range (up to five metres) and as it turned out a lot of them were natives.’’
Over the years he and wife Liz have established 60 shelter belts on the farm, most of which have a high percentage of natives in the mix.
In 2011 the pair won the South Otago Farm Forestry Association’s Peter and Pearl Moffat Award, in recognition of their efforts in creating better shelter.
The range of trees and shrubs they have planted is huge, but a feature of their plantings is establishing low-growing shelter of flaxes, toitoi, viburnums, olearias, pittosporums and escalonia first before planting more wind-prone specimen native trees.
The latter plantings include totara, rimu, kahikatea, rata, ti kouka, native beeches, kowhai, akeake, lancewoods, pseudopanax, hoherias, broadleafs and kanuka, most planted on the leeward side of well fenced, five-metre wide shelter belts.
‘‘When I first bought this block, I spent most of my time picking up half-dead lambs from exposure and this shelter has made a huge difference,’’ Gray says.
The combination of exotic forestry blocks and native shelter belts have transformed the farm.