Pat Fouhy started breeding Angus bulls in 1952 at Marima in the Tararua District.
Today it is a family affair with Pat's son Joe and wife Lea involved, with their son Shaun and his wife Fiona in charge of Glanworth Angus today.
"We've always been conscious of the requirements of the commercial farmer and the type of bulls we're producing," says Joe. "They've got to be efficient cows that can handle tough conditions and still get back and calve and rear good calves and wean good calves.
"We built a breeding programme around performance, recording those cattle from an early date. We were one of the early adopters of performance recording back in the early 60s and have continued that since. But we've always kept a clear mind that the cattle still have to be functional for commercial farmers on hill country in New Zealand.
"They've got to be structurally correct and sound and they need to last. That is the problem with some cattle, that they haven't got that lasting ability. That's due to a lot of things. We are trying to ensure our cattle are structurally correct and have got the ability to thrive under good and bad conditions.
"We've had success in the Steak of Origin competition in 2004 and in 2005 when we won it. In 2008 we won the Best Retail Brand when we were marketing our own beef. We've been in the semi-finals or finals for most of the years since then. We've had good success at that. It has been disbanded this year.
"We're running 260 recorded Angus Stud cows. They graze alongside 3800 breeding ewes for our High Performing sheep operation. We've been getting around 150 per cent lambing, finishing most of the lambs. Our cattle are there to do a job in preparing pastures for lamb finishing and cleaning up any rough feed going into the winter, so that we've got good quality feed when it grows in the spring.
"We're DNA testing a lot of our cattle now. There is now a progression of science in the genetic field were managing to tap into. There are markers available. If you take DNA samples from an animal, this will indicate with better accuracy than just the estimated breeding values, the performance of an animal as a parent or for the future of its life if it's a female.
Angus herd sire Glanworth Wai Group 1213 aged rising 7.
"We're using that technology on some of our cattle. All our replacement females were using that information as well as the performance information that we collect. And we're using it on quite a lot of our bulls as well, which increases the accuracy.
"It means that when the client is buying our bulls, the information they're getting is more accurate that it would be otherwise. It accurately predicts the performance that they're likely to get from the bulls that they buy. Technology is changing all the tine, you've got to keep up with it and use it where you can — it can help the business.
"I've just been up the North Island visiting people who buy bulls from us — all commercial farmers. The important things to them are bulls that will do the job and produce the animals that will meet the market requirement. They need cattle that will last — longevity or stayability for them is critically important for a commercial herd.
"If cows last in their herd until 10 years old, it means they don't have to have as many replacements coming into the herd each year and fertility is vitally important in terms of getting in-calf and getting good calving percentages. It helps lower the cost of production for the commercial farmer.
"If you've got fewer replacements going in, they can have more high-value young animals to sell to market or to market to other farmers. It increases their bottom line as well. It's common sense, sometimes people forget about that.
"They're vitally important in the big scheme of things.
"We're always looking at new ways, trying to see what's out there in terms of things we can add value to our operation and our clients operations.
"We use some outside bloodlines through AI and occasionally we've brought in an outside herd sire as well. We use a lot of our own bulls for one season, generally as yearlings and then sell them as 2 year olds.
"We're bringing in some outside genetics to not only benchmark our cattle against them, but also if we can see where an animal can add performance of our cattle without losing the attributes that our cattle have already got.
"This year we've got a few more bulls than we had for sale last year — 36 bulls. Our bull sale is on June 27 at 2.30pm on the farm. Our yearling bull sale will be held on October 3. We sell as far as Northland and south to Otago. Most go locally to Taihape, Taumaranui and a few up to Gisborne," said Joe.
