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.
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
No need to book some fancy corporate team-bonding trip when you could spend two days mustering, DNA testing and sorting up 360 stud cows into their mating & A.I mobs (thats the easy part, matching calves into right mob is level II of the challenge!) A great exercise in understanding sign language and interpreting yelling/arm waving when you can't hear a thing over the noise of cows and calves. Job done ✔️
Great to host these Aussie lads Tom, Tom and Will and their dairy farmer tour guide Karl to show them Angus cows at altitude @ Fossil Creek and our stud sheep operation. Great discussions about genetics, EBVs, growing out bulls on pasture alone and trends in the red meat sector with one of the Tom's being a meat buyer for JBS Australia.![]()
We thought it was a stunning Spring day, they thought it was bloody cold!
Thats calving 2024 done and dusted @ Fossil Creek. ![]()
350 stud calves tagged, 2 bouts of snow, 2 months rain in 2 days, 2 weeks of norwesters and a sprinkling of sunshine.![]()
Hoping that our order for some Spring grass growth was received!
A bit rough when you get weighed and tagged even before you can walk or Mum gets the chance to freshen you up! Another great calf from one of our donor cows, L238.![]()
(Disclaimer.... the weather is no longer like this... the Southern storm has hit again tonight)
Southern calving in full swing with 230 stud calves tagged and weighed here in 16 days, with just over 100 left to calve. Global cooling in action with another hit of snow in the maternity paddocks. Looking forward to some grass growth after the welcome moisture which takes us to just over 300mls so far for the year
Not often you get gold stars on your chart these days, so we're pretty stoked to get 5 of them!
