LAKE Boga’s Roly Park just keeps rolling on – and is picking up some serious speed with every new achievement.
Such as blitzing the Sydney Easter Royal where his small team of Shorthorns seriously scooped the pool in the beef cattle pavilion.
Which included, amongst other successes, the champion and reserve champion junior bulls along with the reserve champion senior cow and reserve champion senior bull.
This has understandably put a very big smile on the face of Roly Park’s Scott Bruton who agreed his team of seven stud exhibits and six steers (four purebred and two crossbred) has performed above and beyond.
“Yep, it was a pretty good show,” he said.
“We’re not the biggest stud around; we currently have 50 breeders in our herd, but we have had a fair bit of success at show – but this year’s Sydney Royal has been the best of all.
“Next we will be taking five bulls to the Shorthorn National Show and Sale at Dubbo on June 17 and 18 and see how we go there.”
And where Roly Park set a stud record sale of $16,000 in 2022 for a bull which went to a commercial beef cattle enterprise in New South Wales.
Even for a stud punching well above its weight, Roly Park’s honour roll from Sydney is impressive:
1. Roly Park Veda finished third in the 9-12-month-old heifer.
2. Roly Park Untouched finished first in the 15-18-month-old heifer.
3. Roly Park Sadie finished first in the cow over 36 months and was then sashed reserve champion senior female.
4. Roly Park Viper finished first in the 9-12-month-old bull and went on to be sashed junior champion bull.
5. Roly Park Ultimatum finished third in the 18-19-month-old bull.
6. Roly Park Up the Ante finished first in the 19-20-month-old bull and was then sashed reserve junior champion bull.
7. Roly Park Unbelievable finished first in the 24-30-month-old bull and went on to be sashed reserve senior champion bull.
8. Roly Park won the best two bulls under 20 months.
9. The stud also came third in the best two females under 20 months.
10. Finished first in the sire progeny group (sired by Leeds Lamastar).
11. Roly Park finished first in the breeders’ group.
“We also represented the Interbreed competition with our junior champion bull Roly Park Viper and the breeders’ group for the Shorthorns and we were pulled into the top line up with both exhibits – and the judge spoke highly of them both,” Mr Bruton added.
“Roly Park was awarded most successful Shorthorn exhibitor and then best maintained Shorthorn team over five head.
“We were also awarded the Herdsman best maintained beef team.
“So we can look back on Sydney as the best result we have had there, or anywhere.”
Mr Bruton started out in the stud business with what was left of the family’s Shorthorn gene pool in 2002.
He said his uncle and aunt – Ross and Lyn Pfeiffer of Katandra West – had dispersed their stud, and he finished up with “the name and a heifer”.
It was a small start for the then-schoolboy, who was on his way to an electrical apprenticeship (and is now a qualified electrician).
His career might have been as a sparky, but the thing which really lit up his eyes were the Shorthorns, which was pretty inevitabvle when you think about it – apart from the Pfeiffers, he was also getting involved with a second family stud, Swanlea Beef Shorthorns run by Shirley and Arthur Swan at Murraydale.
Mr Bruton’s Shorthorn apprenticeship started long before he became an electrical apprentice.
Before this year’s spread of success at Sydney, he hadn’t exactly been wasting his time on the show circuit.
Previous highlights included a Reserve Junior Interbreed Champion Bull at the Melbourne Royal, followed by grand champion broad ribbons at the Royals in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.
At Rochester’s revived Great Northern Show (after the 2022 floods), Team Roly Park was busy doing what it does best, taking home a swag of ribbons across multiple classes, including with his standout 18-month-old bull Roly Park Mr Sydney being sashed grand champion.
The young sire will now headline Mr Bruton’s team at Deniliquin, Euroa, Cohuna and Sydney before being his star lot at the Shorthorn national show and sale at Dubbo on June 13-14 (where he set a stud record sale of $16,000 in 2022 for a bull which went to a commercial beef cattle enterprise in NSW).
“He was one of the best we have bred” Mr Bruton said.
“Great conformation and muscling and while he wasn’t the biggest bull for his age, he was always going to grow out nicely.
“He was a bit over 700kg after coming out of joining some of our stud heifers and was just about the complete package.
“Peter Collins (one of the industry’s premier judges), who awarded him grand champion Shorthorn bull in Melbourne, and saw him again at Rochester, told me the bull was hard to fault.”
Mr Bruton said his stud was originally Roly Park Beef Shorthorn, recognising the days when the breed actually had a short horn.
But he said the increasing interest in dealing with polled animals had changed the breed from Shorthorn to No-horn.
“It supposedly makes them safer and easier to handle, but I don’t recall having any problems with them,” he added.
“The Shorthorn breed has a natural docility, and it has been one of the must-haves in every animal I breed – the slightest sign of any type of aggression and they’re gone.
“It’s easy to breed in, but takes a lot longer to breed out.
“We also select for marbling and muscling, for me they are some of the great attractions of the breed – along with its tender and tasty meat.
“At the Sydney Royal in 2021 we exhibited a purebred shorthorn steer that won his class on the hoof and took out the virtual taste test award which is based on the MSA eating quality assessment.
“Also in 2022 we were awarded champion carcase at the Swan Hill carcase competition.”
Turning two cows into 50 breeders (and counting) is no mean feat, even when you are working with the breed that built the whole business.
It has required Mr Bruton to carefully manage his outcross genetics – he has used a few bulls from Canada and the US but still mainly uses Australian genetics including Australian sources such as Spry’s Shorthorns, Bayview Shorthorns, and Leeds Shorthorns amongst others.
“We AI all our females, which allows us to select sires for individual cows rather than using a bull for the entire herd,” he said.
“We’ve only purchased a few females since taking over the stud and now have females from our first embryo calves in the herd, which link back to a few of our top females.”
According to Shorthorn Beef, the breed has the oldest breed registry in the world, with the first Shorthorn cattle arriving in Australia in 1825, and barely 65 years later they accounted for 50 per cent of all temperate cattle and 100 per cent of all cattle in the difficult northern climate.
“It literally is,” Mr Bruton says, “the animal on which the Australian beef cattle industry was built, and on which Australia was settled.”
The society says Shorthorn cattle are bred to solve problems, not create them.
“Balancing out all the economically important traits for your business, not just a few, means providing you with an easy care, efficient and productive cow base, producing quality steers suited to a wide variety of markets,” it says.
“The Shorthorn breed offers balanced, multi-trait excellence, designed to increase productivity by impacting all areas of economic importance, not just a few.
“Shorthorn females are extremely adaptable, across a wide variety of environments, and maintain production and fertility under seasonal adversity and across the breed, have excellent marbling traits, combined with high yield percentages.
“They are also extremely efficient converters of feed.”
The Shorthorn ranges from white to a deep, reddish brown, with a mix of both in the middle of the breed spectrum and classified as roan.
And as white as Roly Park Mr Sydney is, around his tail there are pigment spots confirming he has the breed’s natural dark tones deep in his hide, ensuring protection from the harsh Australian sun.
But it is also a sun that is shining on this growing stud, and the road to Sydney and Dubbo is already looking very promising.
Further details from Scott Bruton on 0437 852 239 or scott@rolypark.com.au
