FOSSIL CREEK ANGUS
Welcome to Fossil Creek Angus
The Fossil Creek Angus Stud was established by Neil and Rose Sanderson over two decades ago, originally in North Canterbury.
In 2015, the Sandersons recognised the heightened demand for Fossil Creek genetics and the need to grow the stud to an even larger scale on hill country – they approached Blair and Jane Smith to become partners in Fossil Creek Angus in order to expand the scale of the stud and run it on their North Otago hill country farm.
In 2024, Blair and Jane purchased 100% of the Fossil Creek Angus stud,now running 350 registered stud cows and replacements alongside their Perendale sheep stud and commerical sheep operation of 9,000 stock units.
The Smith young stock, Charlotte (18), Henry (16), George (13) enjoying mustering, tagging, weighing and all other child labour requirements.
Neil and Rose now reside in Canterbury but remain actively involved when they can.
Fossil Creek Angus Sales
Since its inception, the focus of the Fossil Creek Angus herd has not deviated. We aim to produce genetics that reward our clients with the greatest return for the least input. We sell not only our genetics but a programme of integrity, unqualified customer support and product guarantee.
Our flagship event is our Annual Rising 2 Year old Fossil Creek Angus Bull sale in mid June, with all clients and potential buyers encouraged to visit our breeding herd, young stock, herd sires and the bulls for sale at any time.
The Fossil Creek Herd
We are proud of the fact that the Fossil Creek Stud has spent decades balancing all traits that are important to our clientele for both productivity and profitability in their commercial herds. It is essential that the Fossil Creek Angus genetics can perform in all conditions throughout New Zealand.
While calving our 350 stud Angus cows in snow prone tussock country at 650 metres above sea level is a good challenge for our genetics, the real test is how they perform in your breeding herd.
Our Beef in action
We are passionate about growing robust and well grown livestock and conformation comes first. At no time does this override any breeding value attribute.
We take pride in our land and are proud to show you the tussock environment that our new crop of Fossil Creek Angus calves are born in annually and take delight in watching our bull team grow out each year, ready for you to select the right genetics for your individual needs.
This is what drives us.
Keep up with all the latest updates, news, and insights from Fossil Creek Angus. Our newsletter is designed to keep you informed about everything happening at the farm, from key announcements and events to the latest developments.
Click below to explore our newsletter and stay connected with the heart of Fossil Creek Angus.
We welcome Archie Rooney to the Fossil Creek team as part of the school/workplace Gateway Training programme.![]()
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Archie comes from good farming stock, his family live in Waimate and he is a boarder at the Waitaki Boys' High School hostel, where the school has an on-site farm 'Fraser Farm' within their extensive school grounds.![]()
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Archie is in the WBHS 1st XI Cricket team which takes up most of his Summer and Autumn, but if you are a cricketer you will understand this obsession!![]()
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We have hosted dozens of Gateway students over the years from Waitaki Boys' High School, Waitaki Girls' High School and St Kevins College, many of whom we have gone on to employing once they are in the workforce. We are big fans of the programme (possibly the only useful thing the Helen Clark government did) as it matches students with willing workplaces in their chosen career field and we need passionate young people like Archie in our sector.
It was a case of "suns out, guns out" this week for Weaning #2025, with Summer making a late appearance. Even Blair got his Dad-bod out, which should be on the health and safety register as a risk. 😀![]()
350 calves weighed and the trifecta of Breed tag, V Tag and NAIT tag done and dusted. Great to see our second crop of Rustler R300 calves coming through, looking forward to seeing this cohort of calves grow out.
Vivianne is a great lady, and after some good experience in sunny Southland she would love the opportunity to work on another NZ farm, especially one with a Beef operation. Please share with anyone you know might be looking for a keen and able staff member 😀
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500 of these fine Angus ladies preg scanned @ Fossil Creek over the past week, thanks to our vet Dave Robertson and his foetal-age scanning skills. This makes it much easier at calving time to keep them out in the back blocks until a few days before they are due, then bring them into closer tussock blocks to weigh and tag their calves at birth.![]()
A seamless exercise in good weather and no data lost by Jane this year so things are looking up!
This Thursday 27th Feb is your chance to get your hands on some cracking Angus Heifers and Cows at Roecombe Hill, Sheffield, Canterbury, due to the sale of the property.![]()
There are 162 up for sale (all of Fossil Creek breeding) due to calve late August onwards, these girls will shift well to any part of the country. ![]()
Contact Alex Jarman for further details 027 462 0129
Great day for a quick catchup around the traps with herdsires Fossil Creek T080, Te Mania Rustler R300, Martin Farming Aswan 2991, Timperley Thunder T109, Rockley Rocky Q7 and Fossil Creek Sketcher S293. ![]()
The party is almost over with the bulls due to leave the ladies and head back to bachelor life in the next few days.....
Welcome to Millie Williams (and Frankie the heading dog) to Fossil Creek Angus as a full time shepherd. ![]()
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Millie has just graduated from Otago Polytechnic's High Country Farming programme at Tinwald Farm and hails from Alexandra so she is feeling right at home with 30 degree days here ever since she arrived.![]()
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She has 3 sisters and is a Twin... so with our other employee Ben being a Triplet, we figure the work rate around here should now be 250%
A.I '24 done and dusted @Fossil Creek, with just over 100 cows in the programme there has been a fair bit of work mustering in and sorting up the cow and calf mobs before the experts Dave Robertson & Ali Bulle from Oamaru Vet Centre and Rose arrived to work their reproductive magic! Pretty cool moment for Rose and her niece Ali to work side by side on this job.![]()
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Looking forward to doing the same with the embryo transfer cows next week with Targeted Breeding
Ovary scanning the 170 stud yearling heifers with Dave Robertson and Franzi Weik as part of the Beef+Lamb Genetics Heifer Fertility study, analysing how Heifer heats/ovary status line up with their CowManager Senztag activity. ![]()
Not entirely sure about the photo of two team members with their pants down at morning tea, looks more like a help-group circle.![]()
The bulls are now out with these girls, looking forward to monitoring them over mating and at foetal date-scanning time.
Great to get all the Fossil Creek Yearling Bulls and Yearling Heifers IMF scanned by Mat Bailey with his new superstar setup (Centralised Ultrasound Processing and an Exago Ultrasound Machine, the freshest technology from the USA). ![]()
We did the easy bit - bringing them in, weighing them and feeding/watering Mat while he crunched the data. ![]()
Great to see this new tech being brought to NZ
