Temperament
We have found our animals to be very friendly, ideally suited to handling on small farms and with a personal connection to the cattle - presumably this is because in Austria these cattle were always raised as part of the farming family.
Health
We just went through a period of drought, and even here at the coast we struggled for feed in the paddocks over the winter. We found that despite only feeding very little hay, the heifers really held their condition exceptionally well (way better than the angus herd next door anyway).
We are also so far quite happy with the calving of the heifers, who have calved down easily with calves from Purebred Pinzgauer Bulls (rather than smaller breed sires). So far so good!
We've also met quite a few cows of rather advanced age that have been producing calves every year, the mother of one of our heifers in Victoria is 18 yrs old now and still going, in Austria there was a 23yr old that had produced 22 calves and was in calf again. The mother of our Lockwood Lodge Naomi was born in 2001 and has a heifer calf at foot again in 2019. Longevity is a great trait when one does become fond of the girls!
Meat
They say that Pinzgauer beef is exceptionally tender - so far we've tried a steak in Austria and that certainly lived up to that claim. We will be very interested to see once we get to taste our own.
In the meantime, we think that life's too short to look at ugly cattle - so why not have the most beautiful breed in the world in the paddock ;-)
