Willack Poll Herefords
History
The Willack herd of Bill and Annie Lack is now in its 47 th year of breeding registered Poll Herefords.
Bill has been involved with Poll Herefords for over sixty years, commencing his interest as a five year old when his father commenced the Cromer Park Stud at Wangaratta. He has memories of the country show circuit in the sixties and of helping his father selecting stud females out of Western Victoria as an eight year old to go with an Ardno bull delected at the Sydney Royal Show.
As a 10 year old he was given his first cow by his grandfather for helping check the cattle and giving them salt on Mount Hotham. In 1976 he bought his first of stud heifers to commence his own Willack Poll Hereford stud. This was run in conjunction with the Cromer Park herd until moving his herd on the purchase of the current property at Dawson (near Heyfield) in 1990.
Original females were purchased from Langowan, Craigielea, Spring Valley, Clear Springs, Annandale and Kubanka.
Breeding
More females were added including some from River Perry, Tarwin, Springfield and Tangwyn. Another 10 heifers were added on the passing of Bill’s father in 2008 and another 9 purchased at the 1014 dispersal of the Cromer Park herd. A cow with a bull calf at foot was also selected from the Chester dispersal in 2017.
Calves born at Willack are the results of the AI program that has been implemented over the last 15 years using bulls that have been prize winners and top sellers at the Dubbo or Wodonga National sales. More recently sires used meet certain performance criteria determined by our breeding philosophy
Sires
Sires selected have included leading Australian sires, Allendale Washington C77, Kidman Formation D142, Allendale Anzac E114, River Perry Fergus, Days Brigadier G101, Valma Honkey Tonk, Yarrandabbie Jingle J018, Days Fahrenheit K103, Wirruna Leap Forward L95, Wirruna Matty M288, Allendale Heidelberg M061, Wirruna Nolan N146, Injemira Techno N276, Wirruna Papa P149, Nth American bulls WLB Global 72M 50S, Churchill Broadway 858F, McCoy 55M Absoute 49S have also been used. Mount Difficult Kenneth K76, Mount Difficult Kenna K72 and Chester Kahuna N062 have been used naturally along with Willack bred sires.
AI Program
2023 has seen calves by new AI sires Ravensdale Spark M037, Injemira Fortune M152 P139, Injemira Fortune M152 Q034 and Injemira Kickstart P093 R153. 2024 will see the first calves by Wirruna Smokin Joe S010 and Glendan Park Senator S096.
Sale Bulls
All bulls are fertility tested, scanned for carcass traits and have DNA samples genomically tested for polledness and known genetic disorders through Herefords Australia as well as having complete Breedplan figures available from ABRI. Willack has a four and a half star rating with Breedplan.
Bill feels that the selection of females over the years has given him a good base to work with as only the best performers were retained during the run of dry years where numbers were halved and only those females which could endure the conditions were retained.