Words by Joanna Grigg & Images by Sarah Horrocks — AngusPRO Magazine 2025
The old-fashioned ‘work hard and accumulate land strategy’ has seen Forbes Cameron end up with a 2000 hectare farm.
Forbes, now in his seventh decade, bought his first piece of land with his brother, in 1969. He earned the deposit shearing in Hawke’s Bay, though the 230 ha block at Weber was rough and rundown.
“But it was a foot in the door,” says Forbes.
The rough block was traded up in 1981 for a better farm at Halcombe.
“We kept getting bigger because whenever people listed small farms, we took the chance to buy them.”
He purchased 80 to 400 ha parcels at a time and lease blocks also helped grow scale. In 1999 Forbes sold the Halcombe blocks and purchased the then 1453 ha Ngāputahi Station, in the Pohangina Valley, Manawatu. In 2011, another 330 ha was added from a neighbouring block, bringing in some flat land for finishing and calving.
Acquiring a decent sized farm sounds easy but Forbes has always been known as a bloody hard worker. In the first year at Ngāputahi, 90 km of post and electric wire fencing were erected.
Much of this has now been upgraded to permanent eight wire fences. Water troughs were also installed, vastly improving water reliability and quality.
When it came to putting the financial institutions to work, Forbes said they always had to match or better interest rates.
“I didn’t mind changing banks if one had a better deal.”
“I guess I’m loyal to my back pocket, not a bank.”
Forbes first stocked the Halcombe farm with Salers cattle, a French breed known for their hardiness. Their genetic base was small and their temperament unreliable, so they introduced Angus cows in 1999 to start moving away from the Salers. The Angus cows came from stud dispersal sales.
Ngāputahi Station is now owned and run by Forbes and his son Angus, and there are three generations living on the property. Forbes’ granddaughter lives on the finishing farm and helps out with cattle work in her spare time — she has a young family. Forbes lives across the river from the main farm and still works at Ngāputahi every day.
The operation requires a high level of intensive management as there are Growbulk, Romney and Angus studs. The sheep studs are selling 800-900 rams annually.
Stud cow numbers have grown to 350 Angus, with 250 commercial cows made up of second tier genetics. Around 50 Angus bulls are sold at the June sale, which is held in the Ngāputahi woolshed. As their cows calve later than many stud farms, no yearlings are offered for sale – they are too young to present. However, Forbes says a few are sold privately to farmers who don’t put the bull out until Christmas.
Forbes enjoys using his experience in genetics to help train young farmers in genetic selection. Each year, the Smedley Station and Pukemiro cadets visit Ngāputahi to have a go at choosing rams in a ‘mock’ buying situation.
“It’s good to see the cadets grow in confidence.”
Calves At Two Kilos A Day
Ngāputahi Station has some very steep country. Blocks are fairly well subdivided, ranging from 5 ha at the smallest, with a few rougher 30 to 40 ha blocks. Rainfall is officially 1200-1400mm per annum, but Forbes says it has been more like 1000mm in recent years.
Despite harsh conditions at times, all the Angus cows wean their calves at 190kg to 250kg, depending on the season. Stud calves stay at Ngāputahi and are run together in their contemporary group to identify the best performers.
Weaned commercial calves go down-country to the finishing farm in Aokautere and from October to April, they can put on 1.5 to 2 kilograms per day. The steers are typically sold by 20 months old, and most of the heifers reach this target, too. There is 40 ha of irrigated land on Ngāputahi and another 40 ha on the finishing block.
The Ngāputahi flats are quite stoney so the Camerons brought a rock crusher up from Gore to crush the ones at the surface. This cost $1000/ha however, it turned a block that couldn’t even be driven on with a farm ute into a smooth surface. Any drilling will bring stones to the surface again, so the blocks remain in permanent ryegrass, white clover and cocksfoot varieties.
On the hills, the stud and commercial cows get a much tougher deal. They run together from weaning (April) to one week before calving in October and follow the 6000 ewes around. They have to eat rushes and poorer quality aged grass, and they peel off up to 120kg/head over winter.
The early years really tested some of the Angus cows that were brought in, which had been reared on high quality feed and gentle country. Intensive selection for hardiness (performance in the face of low feed quality) has been going on for many years since then.
“Anything that couldn’t hack it, and was skinny with a poor calf, was culled.”
All recorded calves are weighed at birth, and dams are assessed for docility, phenotype, udder and teet placement, as well as mothering ability. The worm control programme is to drench calves at weaning, again as a yearling at the end of winter and then once as a heifer before calving as a two-year-old. No mixed age cows are drenched or dipped, and no additional selenium is given, but they get a copper injection to suit the environmental deficiency.
Age is not a reason for culling at Ngāputahi. However, any cows in poor condition are put in the cull mob after winter, regardless of their age.
“I don’t cull on age and have a sixteen-year-old cow that is the dam of R160 and she is still doing the business alright.”
R160 is a home bred herd sire that is used across a mob of 60-70 mixed age cows. He has a great even spread of data.
Forbes is a firm believer in selecting for temperament by isolating young cattle and watching for aggressive or unsettled behaviour.
“As long as you treat them all the same during the process, it is fair.”
This goes for bulls too, who are expected to walk out the gate, not run. Culling for temperament happens all year round.
Drenching is another aspect of farming that Ngāputahi take a hard stance on. When drench resistance first showed in worms in the flock in 1983, Forbes took immediate action to reduce the amount of drenching done in the sheep. Now, each sheep only gets two drenches over their lifetime, all given while as a hogget. The exception was 2024 when an extra drench was given to all hoggets.
“Any ewe that needs an extra drench is marked and goes to the cull mob, and her lamb also goes to the terminal mob.”
Hoggets are given a small window to get in lamb — one cycle with the ram. All hoggets are put to the ram and typically 60% get in lamb, producing a scanning of 90%. Their body weight is usually only 36kg on average but Forbes said the toughest, more productive sheep cope well.
“The cream rises to the surface.”
None of the sheep are treated with fly or lice protection. If fly strike is seen, sheep are treated and then either culled or put to a terminal sire. Forbes said this has made a huge difference in reducing fly strike. Culling for dags started in the early 1980s.
“Fly strike is highly heritable – back in 2006, we had thirty six that were flyblown, and eighteen of those were from the same sire.”
In 2004 the property was smashed in February with a huge rain deluge over four days. The soil loss and damage were extensive. Horses were used to get around initially until tracks could be rebuilt. Some land was retired into permanent pine trees at this time. In hindsight, Forbes said the trees have not solved erosion and they can fall over in a domino effect, making a mess.
“The best thing to hold the hill together is grass or native bush.”
Cyclone Gabrielle in February 2023 took out several bridges and a Bailey bridge is now in place over one creek, however, the Camerons are still waiting on a replacement bridge over the main Pohangina river crossing.
Embryo Investment Pays Off
Using Australian embryos from selected donor cows started in 2005 and was the turning point for Ngāputahi’s Angus stud.
The quest for better meat marbling drove the change and both Forbes and Angus, say it has markedly improved IMF in the stud’s genetics. In 2015, Ngāputahi won the New Zealand Steak of Origin competition and they have won the Glammies (lamb meat competition) twice.
“We won with January-killed ram lambs which shows they can be top eating when not sexually mature.”
When seeking beef marbling genetics (IMF), Forbes travelled to Australia to research and visit a few targeted Angus studs.
Ultrasound was used to detect IMF%, and the first crop of calves to be scanned generated interest from the scanner.
“The increased IMF showed up as fuzziness through the meat and he just said, Holy Hell, look at that!”
If you shop around the processors, there are some good premiums to be found for cattle with higher IMF grading.
Ced Wise, a veterinarian from Australia, now in his 70s, flies out to do the embryo transfer process. This involves flushing the donor cows, which usually happens in early January.
Twenty-six embryos were harvested this year, and twenty-three were placed into recipient cows. The embryos contain genetics from four different cows and six different sires. Forbes said that in the past Ced has had very good success with the embryos holding in the recipient cows.
Forbes and Angus use a lot of semen from overseas in their artificial insemination programme but always follow up with New Zealand herd sires (mostly home bred).
The Camerons have more recently been selecting genetics with more eye muscle area and meat yield, with an aim for steers to yield a carcase that is 60% of their live weight.
“Our bull progeny are getting close, with yields of 58%.”
Forbes questions why farmers would have a 600kg animal that yields only 300kg when it could yield 360kg. At today’s meat price, the extra 60kg could be worth another $400.
“It’s a no brainer.”
Two of the standout homebred bulls for the stud are T26 and R160. Both have good figures and R160 was accepted for
Cohort 14 of the Angus Sire Benchmarking Programme, run by Angus Australia. To make the grade the bull has to be a high performance bull in both genotype and phenotype.
“T26 has huge growth and carcase traits, as well as top docility.”
Forbes says that the stud cows carry genetics for short gestation, lower birth weights, medium growth and, as has already been noted, excellent docility.
The Camerons shifted their performance recording to Angus Australia as soon as they were able to and became part of the AngusPRO group here in New Zealand.
“For me it’s about chasing top cattle performance, as that pays the bills for us.”
Angus now does all the recording, with Forbes’ granddaughter Jasmine helping with the bookwork. All calves are DNA parent verified.
The 2024 bull sale marked 25 years of the Camerons at Ngāputahi, and both Forbes and Angus see a bright outlook for their stud operations.