Deja vu for Welsh Black breeders

By Elizabeth Hart
TYNONG Welsh Black cattle
breeders Allan and Jill Furborough
have won boxes of ribbons for their
prize animals over the past eight
years.
Nevertheless, they were still a lit
tle surprised at their success at the
2009 Royal Melbourne Show.
They won supreme Welsh Black
exhibit with Buchanan Park Hya
cynth, a particular delight for them
because Hyacynth was a calf at foot
when her mother won the same
award at the Royal Melbourne Show
in 2005.
Jill and Allan’s cattle won the
championship categories in the
Welsh Black breed for junior male
and female, senior male and female,
and supreme exhibit, and their cow
and calf were selected in the final 10
of the interbreed category.
“That was a great honour to reach
the final 10,” Jill said, “because in the
interbreed section, all of the beef
breeds are brought into the ring for
the judges to make their selections.”
“The parade of females and their
calves always makes quite a specta
cle.”
Victory followed at Berwick
Show in February this year when the
Furboroughs’ bull Buchanan Park
Knight’s Legacy and his mate
Buchanan Park Knockout took the
awards for the best pair of interbreed
beef bulls. Knockout was also the
runner-up champion bull.
The couple began breeding
Welsh Blacks 10 years ago. They
decided to gain some experience
before putting their animals to the
show ring, but when they did venture
in, they had early successes from the
start, with strings of awards from
2002 onwards.
By 2008, they were poised to take
out a big win at the Bendigo Beef
Nationals when their Welsh Black
youngster Buchanan Park Jackson
won junior champion bull in the inter
breed section.
“It was the first time Welsh Blacks
had been recognised at that level in
Australia,” Jill explains.
“He was up against 27 other
breeds. That show was most signifi
cant for us.”
Allan is an old hand at farming,
originally coming from a property at
Berwick near the Old cheese factory,
where new housing estates have
sprung up over the past 20 years.
Jill spent her youth breeding and
showing smooth fox terriers. Her
parents George and Jean Chudleigh
had the Hallam boarding kennels.
“I grew up in an environment of
breeding and showing animals,” she
said.
Both went to local schools at
Berwick and Hallam.
They live in Berwick but work at
their 130-acre Tynong farm,
Buchanan Park Welsh Black Stud,
every day, where they also run a com
mercial herd.
“Our stud is relatively small, but
we are proud of the quality,” Allan
said.
With their three daughters
Karen, Julie, and Marie grown up, the
couple set up Buchanan Park in 2000
and set about promoting the breed.
The picturesque setting in the
Tynong hills provides peaceful
rolling pastures for the breed they
say is gentle and easy to manage.
Within two years of establishing the
cattle stud, they were producing
champions.
“We love this breed, partly
because they are docile and easy to
handle,” Allan said.
Welsh Blacks have other quali
ties, too. They are renowned for their
ease of calving, low maintenance
requirements, resilience, fast
growth, vigorous breeding, tough
hooves, and rumen capable of break
ing down relatively course fibre.
“The meat is renowned for its ten
der, tasty, succulent qualities,” Jill
said.
Roman literature refers to them as
the Celtic ox. Mature Welsh Black
bulls weigh from 950 to 1100kg.
They reach puberty early and are vig
orous and determined breeders.
The female can still produce
healthy calves at a later age.
As one of the oldest British
breeds, Welsh Blacks are tried and
true rather than exotic. But their
thick, midnight-black coat, their
thick-set legs, and their inquisitive
faces create a dramatic presence in
the show ring as well as against a
backdrop of green fields.
Welsh Blacks are descended from
the mountain cattle of ancient
Britain. Originally, there were two
distinct strains: the compact, sturdy
north Wales type and the larger,
rangier south Wales type. Over the
past 100 years intermingling has led
to an optimum size for maximum
beef production.
“We spend lots of time grooming
and training our cattle for showing,”
Allan said.
It has certainly paid off.
Every year’s awards carry a sense
of deja vu, a feeling that they have
been through it all before, but Allan
and Jill are fairly circumspect; Allan
has been on the land his entire life,
and he knows the exigencies cattle
breeding can bring. Theirs is more a
retirement interest than a necessary
occupation, and that adds to the joy of
it all for both of them.
At their first show in 2002, they
were successful with two firsts
and junior reserve champion bull,
won by Buchanan Park Douglass.
Then in 2003 at the Royal Mel
bourne Show, they exhibited four
animals, winning junior and
reserve champion female, senior
and grand champion female, sen
ior and grand champion bull, and
supreme Welsh Black exhibit
with junior heifer, 12 months old
Buchanan Park Elspbeth Lass.
That year the stud also won sires
progeny, best three head, and
most successful Welsh Black
exhibitor.
Since then they have been the
most successful Welsh Black
exhibitors consecutively for the
past seven years at Royal Mel
bourne Show, and Buchanan
Park Stud is recognised as one of
the most successful in Australia.
“We take great pride in our
small stud,” Allan and Jill said.
Welsh Black cattle are now
established throughout the UK,
and there are herds in Canada,
the USA, Germany and New
Zealand. It was first imported into
Australia from New Zealand in
1984, and there are now breeders
in Victoria, New South Wales,
Queensland, Tasmania and South
Australia.
Genetics have been imported
into Australia from Wales, New
Zealand and Canada as semen
and embryos. Australian genet
ics have also recently been
exported worldwide.