The Beefing It Up field day held by Generation Angus on 17-18 July attracted around 20 young people and was a great learning opportunity, said Dougal Gibson.
Dougal is a South Canterbury farmer helping run his parents’ farms and establishing a small Angus stud. He attended the World Youth Angus event at the World Angus Forum in May 2025 and said the Beefing it up event was a great followup.
The group of 18-27 year olds stayed at the Copthorne Hotel in Masterton and were able to get to know each other on the night before the event.
Run by Nancy Crawshaw of Angus Australia, Max Tweedie of Hallmark Angus stud and Marie Fitzpatrick of Timperley Angus, the group had two farm tours and educational sessions.
The first tour was to Matariki Terraces, on the Wairarapa Coast. Hosted by George and Sarah Tatham, Matariki Terraces is a diversified sheep, beef, and cropping enterprise. A fifth-generation farmer, George brings deep industry insight as a former Beef + Lamb New Zealand director, while Sarah contributes her knowledge as a local district nurse. The visit focused on aligning feeding strategies and genetics to optimise profitability, with detailed discussions around breeding objectives and bull selection.
Farm manager Martin Reisima provided the group with all the day to day runnings of the farm, which gave them a real insight to the operation, Dougal said.
“We were able to look at the cattle and then undertake a bull selection exercise, where we had access to inspecting the bulls and a sheet of their EBVs, and were taught to select the best bulls for different scenarios.”
Following was a very informative session on financial fitness for farming with Josh McKay from Crediflex New Zealand limited, who Dougal says gave some great advice to the young people on running their own farming business, succession planning and good ways to make some money to get started in farming.
“He had some great tips and tricks for us to think about making a start and building up some equity,” Dougal said.
An EBV session deepened everyone’s knowledge about use of performance recording data and genomics, Dougal said.
The next morning was a farm tour, around Ongaha Station, owned by Shane and Lynette McManaway, the second owners in the 175-year history of the 580ha property. With an ethos rooted in positive team culture and ecological harmony, Ongaha combines high-performance cattle finishing systems with progressive cropping and irrigation.
Nico the farm manager showed the group around the farm and shared his farming journey and Shane shared his philosophies on life and farm advice.
Dougal said his highlights over the two days were meeting new people and learning about the animal husbandry necessary to get high performance stock to meet their genetic potential and deepening his knowledge around EBVs.
He highly rated the experience and encouraged other young farmers and breeders to take up similar opportunities.