Philip & Kay Worthington

One of the key character traits of the Lowline breed is the shorter gestation by comparison to the usual cow gestation of nine months and nine days.

Rangiora breeders Philip and Kay Worthington, who have about 130 purebred Lowlines, have used it as a selling point supplying Lowline bulls into the dairy industry.

They’ve been selling bulls to dairy farmers for about six years. The story that one regular buyer told this year sums up what the Lowline breed can do in this context.

The North Canterbury farmer, part of a syndication group of farms, used Jersey semen to artificially inseminate his mixed-breed heifers, then ran Lowline bulls with the herd. The first calves on the ground for the season were the black Lowlines, some days before any Jersey juniors appeared.

The North Canterbury buyer was delighted to turn his milkers around that much earlier and add to his milk cheque earlier.

The smaller calf size is ideal for heifers calving for the first time. The same North Canterbury farmer noted that he did not have to pull any calves from cows mated with his Lowline bulls.

But the small calf size is no disadvantage – the calves feed well and grow quickly. Another buyer of the Woolstone bulls, who has reared Lowline cross heifer and bull calves as beef, along with other cross combinations, has commented that “The little Aussies are tough little buggers and certainly first to line up at the feeders. They do well.’’

And another Rangiora dairy farmer, who sells crossbred calves to calf rearers, had customers coming back asking for “the little black ones’’ because of past experiences with the Lowline’s sturdiness and assertiveness.

Article Courtesy Of The Straight Furrow, NZ.