Rural

From Wellsford to Wales: Kiwi cattle breeder finding success in United Kingdom

A long way from her home, 23-year-old told Grigg she's been showing cattle on and off over the past year.

Thousands of kilometres from little old New Zealand, REX show producer Jo Grigg caught up with fellow Kiwi and cattle breeder Cara Doggett at the Royal Welsh Show in the United Kingdom.

A long way from her home in Wellsford, New Zealand, the 23-year-old told Grigg she's been showing cattle on and off over the past year.

"Did all the show circuits in England, Wales, Scotland and then do the bull sales, so I'm still here showing cows," she said.

Doggett recently also started working with UK Sires, a genetics company based all around England where she does Tilly sales selling semen and also collecting semen on farms in the South-West of England.

As part of her job, she enjoys meeting lots of different people and being able to work with a number of different breeds of cattle across the country.

"It's really nice to meet the farmer and often they say come in for a cup of tea and you hear more about their business and their farm, it's really good."

Doggett has been around cattle all her life, joining a cattle club at just five years old and now has her own beef shorthorn stud in Wellsford with 30 animals including eleven breeding females, the first of which she acquired aged 13.

"I've been breeding bulls and selling females for quite a few years now.

"Because of the show season, I have brought myself a Hereford Heifer, so I have started a Hereford stud over here called Maxwell so I've been showing her around the UK and I will start building numbers here."

She plans to get a calf on the ground this year and look at breeding her from there most likely using bull sex semen to sell the resulting bull calf.

Doggett has also been looking at Canadian genetics to bring back to her shorthorns in New Zealand to try something different to what is commonly seen in Aotearoa.

Listen to the full chat between Cattle Breeder Cara Doggett and Jo Grigg above.

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