The Fossil Creek Angus Stud was established by Neil and Rose Sanderson over two decades ago – harnessing a passion and focus on breeding robust genetics.
In 2015 when 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- who now run the Fossil Creek Breeding cow herd on their Five Forks hill country farm and purchased 100% of the Fossil Creek Angus stud in 2024.
The Smith young stock, Charlotte (17), Henry (15), George (12) have become very useful offspring in the stud, enjoying mustering, tagging, weighing and other child labour requirements.
Neil and Rose remain actively involved.
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 herds.
We select 80 of the 170 bull calves born each year to transit through to our annual R2 bull sale and we pride ourselves on our attention to every facet of performance monitoring – including EBVs, Structural assessement, semen testing and general performance of these bulls as they grow out to become R2 bulls at our annual June sale.
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.
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.
