Testimonials

I had been buying Charolais/Angus composite bulls from Rick’s father Arthur for many years, when Arthur stopped breeding bulls I turned to Gates Performance Genetics to supply us with bulls. In 2012 I purchased 2 composite bulls from Rick to join over our Angus and Black Baldy cows. We calve our cows in July. This year we sold all of the heifer calves at the regular Armidale fat sale on 14^th May (10 months). We received 237c/kg or $871.15/head + GST. I weaned the steer calves to grow them out and at weaning time in mid-May they averaged 442kg. I will be looking to Gates Performance Genetics for a new bull this year.

I had been buying my Angus heifer bulls from another stud with no EBV’s supplied and had been having a fair bit of trouble at calving time. I asked Andrew Starr of Ray White Rural for some ideas, he suggested that we buy a heifer bull with EBV’s, which lead us to Gates Performance Genetics. A suitable calving ease bull was supplied by Rick Gates. Our next calving was a dramatic improvement, since then we have been buying 12-14 month old calving ease bulls from Rick and Sam on a regular basis.

I was first introduced to Rick Gates in early 2014 through Andrew Starr, Ray White Rural Guyra/Armidale. Since then Rick has been instrumental in growing my lambing business. Initially I was aiming to increase frame size, increase fertility and most importantly to produce a better quality lamb, which would ultimately add better productivity per hectare to my property.

At first I was hesitant in stocking Maternal Composite ewes as they are not a traditional New England ewe. However on further inspection, Rick explained some key attributes of a Maternal Composite ewe. He explained fertility, mothering ability, worm resistance, growth, carcass and easy care ewe genetics. This knowledge proved invaluable in my decision making.

Rick's Maternal Composite ewes were scanned in lamb at 185%, and I achieved in a drought year 162% lambing. The Composite Ewes have outperformed other second cross lambs on my property.  Additionally, lambs from Rick’s Maternal Composite ewes easily met specifications for both supermarket and export trade.

 I highly recommend Rick Gates and look forward to working with him in the future.

I run 12 properties totalling 24,000 acres west of Uralla. Cattle are now the main enterprise but have joined up to 10,000 ewes depending on the season. Several years ago I purchased a run of White Suffolk rams from Rick Gates. The rams were used for multiple joinings without supplementary feeding. They remained in very good working condition with no breakdowns or losses. The lambs were the best lambs I have bred by a long shot. They went to fatteners further south with excellent results. These rams are going into their third year of use and have completed a dozen or more joinings in this time. They have never recieved any supplementary feeding and are run on supered native country. Very pleased with these rams they are great examples of fertility, conformation, performance and survivability under some very tough conditions . They are the best rams I have used in over twenty years of producing cross bred lambs.

I started buying White Suffolk rams from Gates Performance Genetics to join over merino ewes to market as a finished lamb direct to the abattoir. Immediately I started to see that the rams from Gates Performance Gentics were far superior than previously purchased rams that had no ASBV's. Since then I have been convinced that there are large gains to be made through the use of superior performance tested genetics and with merino ewe prices expected to be very high when I need to replace CFA ewes, I have decided to go to the Gates Maternal Composite self-replacing system. The path I have followed has been to retain the best of my Merino/White Suffolk ewe lambs and after inspecting the Maternal Composite program first hand and understanding the concept of them and the cumulative gains that can be made, have decided to continue by joining these ewes to Gates Maternal Composite rams in the future.