In the auctions at Scone, the Battalion Speckle Park Stud reached top price with one of its bulls (Battalion Stockade) fetching $26,000 and the other (Battalion Skyfall) getting the third highest price at $18,000, giving the stud the top vendor average.

Owner Grant Kneipp said they had decided to diversity into the new breed simply to hedge bets. “If one’s down, the other might be up”, he said.

They chose Speckle Park because of its “carcass merits” – the amount of muscle.

Mr Kneipp who is the fourth generation Hereford stud owner on the property north of Glen Innes towards Tenterfield said that they had been studying the new breed for five or six years before buying the first embryo.

Usually, studs take years to come through but this succeeded with a high price in the first year. It was the top price in Scone and among the top ten prices ever in Australia.

Grant Kneipp said he was pleased because “we are relatively unknown”. The bulls will also go into stud and that pleased Grant. “If you’ve got bulls good enough for other studs, that says a lot”.

Speckle Park is becoming increasingly popular in Australia. The breed originated in Canada and is so-called because of its black and white speckle, usually black speckled with white (as was the highest price bull sold at Scone) or occasionally with more white than black (though, it should be said, pure black is rare but not unknown).

Those in the industry describe it as “docile” and so offering more meat for less stress.