Mangaotea Farm is a 600 hectare property situated in the Central Taranaki area, east of Tariki.

Contour ranges from peat flats, to rolling, to steeper hills. Our rainfall is approximately 80 inches per year. We are a multi enterprise operation, this comprises of 1100 Dairy Heifer grazing, 500 Winter Dairy Cows, 280 Service bulls (of which 180 are sold and the balance leased), 1200 ewes, fattening all lambs on farm, as well as selling hay & silage, a recently established Southdown Stud as been added to the enterprise.

The annual on farm Service bull sale is held in September, selling approx 180 bulls to the dairy industry, comprising of Purebred Hereford, Angus, Murray Grey, and Jersey 1 & 2 year olds. Rob sources all his bulls from reputable breeders as weaners or yearlings; however it was getting harder to source the type of Hereford bulls suitable for our market. At the time I was looking for an investment and an interest, so Mangaotea Hereford Stud was founded in 2003 with the purchase of 7 weaner heifers from Seven Hills stud in Taranaki. My arrangement with my husband (with some skilful negotiation) was to build a herd up to 50, and he would buy my weaner bulls.

A couple of years into it , Rob saw how much enjoyment I was having with my cattle, so he decided there was room enough for some Angus cows, that we would go 50/50, with 100 breeding cows altogether, run individually of course. So now we have some very interesting discussions, and we have some friendly rivalry, but Rob seems to be taking a while to build his herd so I told him I’ll pick up the slack and have more Herefords. We shall see.

A real turning point with my herd came in 2007 when I bought 20 Cows and calves from the Chandon stud. The calves at foot were a very nice line, mostly heifers sired by Koanui Arrow 5400. Now with those heifers calving this year and rearing their calves well, I decided to buy the 4 year old sire as he was producing attractive daughters with great milking ability. I am using him over my Mixed Aged cows and my 2006 beef expo bull Grassmere Commodore 391 for my younger cows and two year heifers. I’m really looking forward to my herd’s future and further development through the use of these sires.