News
Open Day Sunday 3rd October 2010
We are holding an Open Day by way of a herd visit to the Ashrose Herd at Pencoed Farm. Hebron. Whitland Carmarthen SA34 0YP This will be a great opportunity to see modern Murray Greys at their best. Please contact Wendy Finucane Tel 
01994 419356
or our Administrator Rosemary Kent 01873 810547 to book a place, members and non members welcome
National Beef Association
Beef Expo 2010 The Way Forward Report
The Society mounted a display at the Beef Event. Bill and Judith Woolley came down from Hepple with their Cow Nadine with a very strong British Blue bull calf at foot. Rosemary Kent and Peter Harris were also in attendance to offer enthusiastic support. There was quite a deal of interest in the cow and particularly the calf. Our members were able to have very useful discussions with farmers attending the event. The immediate result they were able to arrange for Mark Farrar from Tadcaster, to purchase 9 heifers from Copgrove Stud to start a new Murray Grey Herd.
Calves by Leighon Anselm
South African Notes from Steph and Tim, Lions River, South Africa
We have had the wettest summer on record and the cattle have come through remarkably well. We felt we were treading water a bit with our breeding as we could not afford the top bulls coming through from Australia as we are still essentially in a commercial breeding situation. Luckily you offered us Leighon Anselm and when the calves started dropping we could see clearly that we had gone up a notch. They have been consistently better than average, grown out well with plenty of depth and strength. The oldest calves are now 10 months old and although they range from 3/4 to 7/8 pure out of our original Nguni cross cows, they are uniform and look as though they will form a good solid base to breed from.
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Calves by Leighon Anslem
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Calves by Leighon Anslem
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Elsewhere he has done the same thing. Charles van Wyk in Mpumalanga has used Anselm on both red and black Angus and although it is early days, at this stage they are doing well.
Gerald Buhr, farming in the sugar cane area of the KwaZulu Natal coastal region, reports the Anselm bull calves are really strong and at 10 months are looking as though they will be able to make an impression when he uses them on his commercial cows.
Dr Merron Galliers, in the uplands of East Griqualand, reports he is very satisfied with his progeny. All these breeders have used Anselm again this season on the strength of what they have seen in their first calves. Hein Mentz, also in Mpumalanga, used both Anselm and Will Scarlet on his Dexter cows (would you believe!) wanting to produce a dun and did not have a single calving problem. The progeny look rather like miniature (Lowline) Murray Greys as you can imagine, but he's chuffed.
We have applied to the Registrar for permission to import a parcel of three bulls from the Banksia Ridge stud. They are Banksia Ridge Yogi Bear, Yttrium and Zorro and if they give us the sort of improvement we got from Anselm we'll have some extremely happy South African Murray Grey breeders.
That's about it everybody. Hope you all have a great summer and for those showing - good luck, I envy you! We're coming into winter here which will be a relief in a way as hopefully it will kill off all our ghastly ticks and tick born diseases, at least for a few months.