Late summer calves.

Red Devon Cattle are one of the oldest breeds of cattle in New Zealand. They were very popular in the early days for their dual purposes.

The cows were used for milk production and meat while the Bullocks worked in the forests pulling logs and were also used for meat.

Over the years with the importation of Dairy cattle breeds the demand for milk production from the Red Devon’s diminished, also with the European cattle breeds coming along and being much larger animals, there was more competition for the meat industry.

It's all in the shape.

Forestry became more in need of machinery to speed up the logging process and all these things together helped in the reduction in the size of the Red Devon Herd and its popularity in New Zealand.

In the 1960-1970’s there were only about ½ dozen Red Devon Breeders left and with the real threat of the breed disappearing from the New Zealand cattle scene, they all got together to try and save the breed.

It has been with much hard work on their parts and with the importation of cattle and semen, mostly from the United Kingdom and Australia in those days that the breed has recovered to what it is today.

We of the PROGRESSIVE RED DEVONS are continuing in this work which had largely stopped for the past 20 years, and are importing new semen from the United Kingdom and Australia from their more modern bulls so that our cattle are again attaining the growth rates that compare with our opposition.

Red Devon bulls are known for being docile.

We have been going along these lines for the past two years and are finding already that our cattle are getting back to the figures that had previously been achieved. There are calves at foot this year and also next year from the U.K. Bull Brightley Diamond who we saw on our travels in 2004 and from our own G10 Bull who did us proud in the 1970’s.

These calves are showing to be a real steep up from the prior year’s calves. Next year we will be introducing new bloodlines from Australia using semen from Krakon and Cirrus, who is in the top 5% of the Red Devon Breed in Australia for growth rate and Milking ability.