A century of breeding and milking was celebrated at the recent Warwick Farm and Progressive Holsteins on-farm sale, at Greendale, NSW.
The sale was held on September 17, on the family farm in the Bega Valley, owned by generations of the Pearce family.
This year, the Pearce family is celebrating a century of breeding dairy cows at Warwick Farm. The current ownership is a three-way partnership between Norm and Narelle Pearce and their son, Tom, who is also the herd manager.
Warwick Farm Holsteins brought artificial insemination into their breeding management in 1980, and have been registering cows with this prefix and the Progressive Holsteins prefix since 1988.
Now their entire dairy herd is registered. In 2019, the family began genomic testing their cattle.
With many young cattle coming into the 250-head registered milking herd this season, the Pearce family decided to sell a run of two-year-old Holstein cows and heifers.
The on-farm sale was an opportunity for other farmers to buy fresh young cows and in-calf heifers, to boost the supply curve of spring milking and increase their herd numbers after a couple of challenging years in the dairy industry.
Tom Pearce said there was also a surplus of their well-bred heifers available after the collapse of the export market.
“Like a lot of people, we’ve lost our export heifer market and we had really geared our business for that. We got pretty good at breeding quality heifers for that market,” Tom said.
“We thought about our options for selling, whether to sell privately or do something else.
“Brian Leslie from Dairy Livestock Services was in the district and I contacted him to discuss the logistics of going down the live auction path.
“Given the pedigrees behind the cattle, we decided that was a good option. It all came together really quickly.”
Tom was pleased with the sale result.
“There were a lot of people at the farm, and there were 130 people watching online, with 31 bidders registered online,” he said.
“I think 60 per cent of the lots were bid for online, and 32 lots were actually sold to online bidders.
“The top-priced cow sold to an online bidder.”
Brad Fraser, of Denman in the Hunter Valley, NSW, bid the highest to take home lot 38, Warwick Farm Caffeine Sweet, born 16/3/2023 and calved 10/7/2025, paying $7100.
Her sire was Warwick Farm Unstoppabull Caffeine and she had grand-dams bred from the Blondin family.
Brad also purchased lot 4, paying $3750 for Warwick Farm Hano Georgetta, born 17/4/2023 and calved 6/7/2025.
“She isn’t a big cow, but she stood out with a nice udder,” Tom said.
A volume buyer was the Watts family from Pyree, near Nowra in NSW.
“They bought a nice group of cows,” Tom said.
“Those four lots were some of the nicer cows in the sale.”
The sale’s highest price paid was $7100, for an average of $3385, with 72 lots sold.
The average was held up with many cattle selling between $3000 and $4000.
Lot 21, Progressive Hano Fussy, born 27/5/2023 and calved 17/8/2025, sold at $4750.
Lot 54, Warwick Farm Mirand Rain, a heifer pregnancy-tested-in-calf to Siemens Parbo and due on 10/10/2025, sold at $4750.
“I was really happy with how the heifers came together in the group,” Tom said.
“There were some fairly high square heifers with good udders underneath, that looked good on paper.
“I chose the line-up of heifers on paper, because I knew if I went out to look at them in the paddock, I’d second-guess myself.”
Lot 15, Warwick Farm Mirand Luster-po, born 10/4/2022 and calved 9/7/2024, and due 13/2/2025 PTIC to Walnutlawn PG Brantley, sold at $4500.
Lot 39, Warwick Farm Woodman Licorice, born 11/9/2022, calved 17/2/2025, sold at $4400.
Lot 17, Warwick Farm Unix Marigold, born 29/3/2023 and calved on 17/7/2025, sold at $4250.
Lot 72 rounded out the sale, sold at $4200. Warwick Farm Mirand Grace-po, born 22/8/2022 and calved 4/3/2025, she was sold PTIC to Siemers Halliant-p (sexed and due on 17/3/2026.
There were also several straws of semen that went up for auction.
Eight straws of Braedale Goldwyn sold at $900 each, against very keen bidding.
The sale was facilitated by Dairy Livestock Services, and integrated online with Stocklive.