ORIGIN
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When we were visiting on my uncle’s farm in Zambia during the late 1960’s I was for the first time introduced to some Boran cattle. I was fascinated by their sturdy body structure and muscling on a small body frame. It was strange that at no stage had this unique African cattle breed crossed the South African borders.

On hearing about the importation of Borans during 1990’s we once again became interested in the breed, but knowing about all the hassles of embryo transfers, we decided to wait until the live animals could be bought. Realizing that the breed was becoming more and more expensive we decided to buy 10 SP females and a bull TLM 03 65 (UMVUBU) for R150, 000 on Terry Mclintoc’s dispersal sale in February 2006 as this was arguably the best Boran Stud in South Africa.

From 2007 to 2011 we bought in several more unrelated SP females from what we considered the best bloodlines in South Africa to widen our genetic pool. By this time our best original females had already had two to three calves and we were happy to flush the best ones which we were sure would not breed many of the faults we saw in other Borans that were flushed even as heifers with faults and no records at the time just for the numbers so as to make money.

From the very beginning breeding poled Borans was our long-term vision but more importantly they had to be good Boran cattle having the traits of the excellent commercial herds we saw in Zambia but mostly in Kenia. We were however shocked by many of the cows we saw in the embryo stations that South African breeders had selected for embryo export. Many of the cows were obvious eccentric Borans and not the brilliant middle of the road Borans we had seen in the herds of the bigger commercial farmers.

We were thus very weary and focused when buying to only concentrate on well adapted Borans that would benefit our South African commercial breeders. Thus by 2013 – 15 half our females were still horned cows but of the type we were looking for, but from the start we used only polled bulls or were we really needed a bloodline bulls with scurs or light horns. Semen was also bought from certain bulls we needed but could not buy.

Having at that stage reached our goal of a 100 + stud females from more than 38 different sires representing all the best Kenyan and Zambian bloodlines available we were then in a position to seriously concentrate on genetically improving our heard to breed the best bulls for commercial breeders.