Blarney Castle Estate is home to 160 Limousin, Limousin cross and Simmental cross suckler cows. The herd is owned by Charles and Caroline Colthurst. A suckler to beef system is in place with bulls killed at 16-months and heifers killed before 24-months. Cows calve from mid-January onwards for approximately 12-weeks. The herd currently uses a mix of Simmental and Limousin stock bulls. Two of these bulls have been sourced using the Stock Bull Finder.
One of these bulls is Gaggin Raprico ET. The 2020 born bull is a half-brother to Gaggin Power, who is currently standing with Eurogene, is sired by S2106. He has a Replacement Index of €162 and a Terminal Index of €147. This well-balanced bull boasts a calving difficulty of 4.6% on cows, a carcass weight figure of 30.1kg and carcass conformation of 2.43. Daughter milk (kg) is also strong at 5.5kg. Recently, the first crop of bulls were finished. They graded on average U= 2+ at 493 days. Caroline is very happy with Raprico’s performance and the quality of his progeny. In fact, over half of all the heifers being retained for breeding this year will be sired by Raprico.
Caroline highly recommends the ICBF Stock Bull Finder. She found it to be “extremely user friendly” and “well laid out”. She also acknowledged the wide variety of breeds, ages and locations of the bulls available on the app which gave plenty of choice to famers.
To find your next beef Stockbull, use the ICBF StockBull Finder! There is over 1700+ high-genetic merit beef bulls from a variety of breeds available.