12 | “We have 280 in-calf cows and we take them all through, because we are quite late calving.” Embracing tech for measured growth Like many traditionally sheep farmers, the drive towards more beef production has been driven by the need to accept economic realities and the low wool value. Randall Johnston Jeff and Amy Hall run a busy, 870ha sheep and beef operation at Matiere, about 20 minutes north-east of Taumarunui in the King Country, with 280 in-calf cows, 2,600 ewes and 800 hoggets. Like many traditionally sheep farmers, the drive towards more beef production has been driven by the need to accept economic realities and the low wool value, a situation they describes as unfortunate but one that must be adapted to nonetheless. Jeff and Amy buy ‘profit-makers’ from Rislington Cattle; a multi-breed composite beef cattle breed created for calving ease, feed efficiency and carcass quality – that was developed as a four-breed cross (Angus, Simmental, Gelbvieh and South Devon). “I like what Rislington do. They weigh how much they eat and monitor how much weight they put on from that. We certainly look at bulls that are eating less but growing more.” They have also recently started buying some simmentals from Lowridge Simmentals. “We have increased the focus on beef in recent years but we are still sitting at about half and half (sheep-beef),” Jeff explains. “The sheep were Romney, now we’ve started going into Wiltshires.” “Just the amount of work really and, while wool has started coming back up, when it hit a dollar we decided to pull the pin.” Amy works on the farm on a casual basis, as she also works three days a week at the hospital in town (Taumarunui). They have three children Flynn, 13, Meilah, 11, and Jonty, 10 – who are all appreciating the farm more as they grow older. Staff member Jesse Marshall, 42, also works 20 hours a week to help out and has been with them for about three years now. Jeff and Amy have 470ha that they lease, that is quite steep country, but they do have a good balance of fairly easy country on the remaining land that they own themselves. The team generally plant about 13ha in cropping each season, with chicory chosen as the summer crop this year. “That’s for our work lambs from December through to January and then we put our ewe lambs on there to get them off to the ram,” Jeff says. “We have 280 in-calf cows and we take them all through, because we are quite late calving. We also have 260 calves and 150 fattening cattle.” Jeff describes the last summer as ‘amazing’ in terms of pasture growth, and then they only had about 25mm on rain in May, which is very unusual. Luckily there was a lot of fog (not unusual for the central North Island) and thankfully that kept the grass ticking along regardless, with pretty good growth, even into June. They’ve been on this particular farm for the last ten years having previously leased the neighbors’ land for nine years, which was 300ha and the place where they first started out farming. RURAL PEOPLE » Jeff Hall About six years after they started the first lease; they took out another lease (which they still have now) of 470ha, and then they brought their first place of 230ha about a decade ago and then an additional 170ha block about five years ago (which is within a walk-able 4 kilometers and proven very handy for rotating stock). The team has just signed up for Halter for his cow herd and Jeff and Amy are excited to see the benefits that will have and just how far different aspects of the technology and data can be utilised going forward. “We’ve got some pretty big paddocks; from 55ha all the way down to 5ha. With that coming through; I’m confident that we will be able to increase our stock numbers, but we want to do that in a wellinformed and manageable way.” Annual Yearling Bull Sale 9thOctober 2026 Offices in Otorohanga, Te Awamutu & Taumarunui info@baileyingham.co.nz | www.baileyingham.co.nz PHONE: 07 873 7325 | FREEPHONE: 0800 482 928 Quality Service to Farmers & Businesses Bailey Ingham Ltd is proud to be associated with Jeff and Amy Hall
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