Tim and Justine McRae milk about 480 cows at Seaward Downs, near Edendale.
About 480 calves were born on farm this season and 75 were put on the bobby truck, Mr McRae said at a field day on the farm, run by Beef + Lamb New Zealand and DairyNZ.
"That’s pretty neat if we can only put 15% of our calves on the truck," he said.
Of the 500 calves born on farm in the 2024-25 season, 64 were put on the bobby truck.
Those calves were usually Friesian bulls lacking structural soundness or the progeny of ultra-short gestation genetics.
An aim on the farm was to reduce wastage.
"It is nice to see the calves being grown out and not wasted and hopefully it helps with our social licence to farm."
This season, the couple bought their 245ha farm, which had been in the McRae family for a century.
"It is pretty special to carry on that legacy," Mr McRae said.
They began lower order sharemilking on the property in 2012, and bought the Friesian herd in 2021.
They also lease a run-off block next door.
The breeding programme once consisted of six weeks of artificial insemination and bulls followed.
The genetics used at mating were Friesian, followed by short-gestation Hereford and then ultra-short gestation for the final three weeks.
Sexed semen was introduced when they put smart collars on their cows in 2021.
The top performing 20% of the cows were given sexed-semen for three weeks, the middle 50% were inseminated with LIC genetics from its "Forward Pack" team and the bottom performing 30% of the herd were inseminated with beef genetics.
They once solely used Hereford beef genetics but then introduced some Charolais genetics including bull Kakahu Gerry.
The Charolais progeny were good so they increased their use of the genetics in their breeding programme.
"We thought we would jump all in and use 160 straws a year of Charolais."
When the supply of Charolais straws was exhausted, they used Hereford genetics up to seven and a-half weeks after the insemination of the first cow.
Short gestation genetics were used for the remainder of the breeding season to "tighten up the tail".
Calving of those cows starts about August 3 and ends in October.
They once artificially inseminated heifers and then a week later run them with an Angus bull.
"We did that for a couple of years but it was a lot of work."
Now the heifer breeding only involved an Angus bull and every calf was retained.
All dairy-beef calves and replacement dairy calves were treated the same from their first day.
To feed the calves, milk was taken from the vat, colostrum and more than 6 tonnes of milk powder was used a year.
Calves were ad-lib fed milk for five weeks.
After that they were given 5 litres of milk once-a-day, until they weighed about 90kg.
"We are rearing 230 calves so when we are doing it ad-lib, that obviously comes at a bit of a cost."
He estimated the cost to ad-lib feed a calf to weaning at about $470 per animal.
"It produces a good product."
Calves were then weaned and served meal and hay for up to 10 days.
The beef cattle weighed about 260kg when they were put on crop, usually after duck-shooting, about mid-May.
Feeding calves well was important as some of them were sold to rearers.
The same family had bought their calves for the past 12 years or so.
"That’s our product heading out the gate and we have pride in supplying calves that are well fed."
