The mastery lies within the matrons

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An addiction to the challenges of breeding stud cattle is what drives Chris Knox and Helen Alexander of DSK Angus and Charolais.

The cattle in their paddocks at Borah Station near Coonabarabran NSW, combined with their years of royal show success and experience as cattle judges, suggests the mastery of the craft surely does run intravenously through them.

The pair are undeniably workers, and they are modest in the telling of their story. From family backgrounds in dairy farms, they have both worked their way through the industry, placing themselves in the position to buy a property off the back of their cattle and a previous string of lease blocks.

They are gutsy people, but then again guts, determination and a little thought outside of the box are prerequisites for people who have made it work on the land.

"We've done a few radical things," Mr Knox said.

"We are probably the only stud to run our own little sale at the Sydney show, we called it the shed sale. We had a grand champion win that year."

They ran the impromptu sale, in the stalls of the show sheds at the Sydney Royal, and while it was a risky move to break away, and serrate against the grain, it proved a success.

Listening to Mr Knox recount the story at the Borah Station kitchen table, his face flickered with the hindsight, a slightly rueful grin, and then a smirk of an ambitious man, satisfied with the risk and the reward, won over his expression. There was laughter as they both agreed it was a radical move that they were proud to have made.

This story confirms that they are just the type of people it takes to bring a vision to life.

Firm in their breeding aims, the pair have stuck to their guns, even if it meant leaving the country to source the type of animal that suited their program.

"We've never chased the mainstream AI sires in Australia, because we have always been conscious of a lot of line breeding, and well we just saw a lot of other things in them that we didn't like," Mr Knox said.

"So we made the decision to outcross. We liked the Canadian type of cattle, they virtually matched us at the time. Being bigger framed, volume type cows, with good legs and feet, it's pretty hard to find that type of cow over there now."

In 2010 when visiting friends, Ms Alexander saw Remitall Rachis, which was their first big input of Canadian genetics, and they think it is still the best Angus bull they have used.

On another trip in 2012, an opportunity arose to visit the Coldstream Angus herd before their upcoming dispersal. It was there they purchased their first Canadian donor females and their venture into fully-imported Canadian embryos began.

"We flushed the Canadian females to the best type of Canadian sire that we could find and brought those embryos home."

At DSK, they believe the real mastery lies within the matrons.

When Mr Knox sees an ideal daughter or young sire offered for sale, he doesn't want to buy the article, instead, he looks to buy the dam that made it.

"We have always taken the punt with the old producer - not the young gun progeny," Mr Knox said.

"If the dam has consistently proven she can put the goods on the ground, we take her home as long as she's still healthy, flush her and get a lifetime of production out of a cow that has been proven."

DSK's embryo transfer records stretch back to 1990 and they have always trusted in the progressive breeding technology to be the best way forward, if your females are proven.

Mr Knox said this year they attended the Angus Youth Round-up, where his grandson exhibited and won grand champion heifer.

A strong DSK dam line streams back through her pedigree and for them, this is the pinnacle of their life's work - to see their unique genetics producing down the bloodlines for their family and others that have purchased them.

The heifer's dam line goes back to a DSK foundation dam in Te Mania Dandaloo F156, and years before, Mr Knox's daughter Donna also led a heifer from the same dam line to success.

"That cow just kept on breeding 'em, hey," he said.

Mr Knox said the problem with breeding from these older dams and sires is that you can kiss goodbye to useful Breedplan figures.

"We do watch figures, and use them in our herd, but we will ignore negative figures if we know that a breeder has already produced for real. We will always continue to appraise the cattle for what we see and how they perform," Mr Knox said.

Mr Knox and Ms Alexander believe the high selection pressure which has been placed on intramuscular fat in Angus cattle has had a negative impact on the breed.

"We've never chased IMF, although we are conscious of eating and carcase quality in our cattle," Mr Knox said.

"Performance is your profit driver and that is kilos, no one is getting paid for IMF just yet, but the Angus breed has changed a lot in the pursuit of higher IMF types of cattle," he said.

Mr Knox said he finds that cattle with high IMF figures are not as robust, as they do not have the muscle content or the constitution of the traditional Angus.

They are firm believers that you can achieve top eating quality without chasing higher IMF figures to put in an estimated breeding value box. For them it's all about maintaining the phenotypic traits of a good carcase and breeding from lines proven on the kill floor.

"We have a cow out here that every year, when we scan, her progeny has the highest IMF in our herd," Mr Knox said.

We took a steer out of this cow to Sydney that was by another of our imported Canadian bulls, Young Dale Xcaliber, and he was reserve champion carcase and highest marbling and champion taste test."

"Her next bull calf by our Tex bull, we steered and took him to Brisbane, and that calf had a marble score of 8 at 11 months, and won the champion taste test at the EKKA carcase comp. But when you look at that cow's IMF box, she is not supposed to be doing that."

Ms Alexander said the fact that she's proven on the kill floor to be a high marbling and productive female is enough for them.

"It goes back to dollars on the ground - and we will follow that line over the estimated numbers."

Mr Knox believes weighing and scanning for EMA, IMF, fats and scrotal is the most valuable and raw form of data you can get from the one contemporary group.

"Although we haven't chased figures, when we do our scanning, our IMF reads as high as anyone's," Mr Knox said.

He said their net feed intake EBVs are good because they breed for performance cattle, and they focus on this trait.

"We have just bought a bull in Missouri that is out of one of the most efficient cows in the breed, so we are keeping down that track, and using what has been proven previously to get there," he said.

Mr Knox and Ms Alexander said they are "old school cattle people", and they would like to see the science that is currently used progress, to better align with the practical outcomes of consistently good beef cattle, being high performance, fertility and efficiency.

During his time as a cattle judge and seedstock producer, Mr Knox has enjoyed seeing versatility in cattle the most.

"Whether cattle are finishing early or suddenly you've got some grass and you want to keep steers on to make a bit more money out of them. I like to see cattle with the length, depth and capacity to suit all of these possibilities for the commercial producer, who is trying to make the most out of the season he has been dealt," Mr Knox said.

"We live to see what we can produce, it's about the challenge of breeding, mixing the right bull with the right cow to make something we're happy with."

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