The Fire Sky Story

With our family’s long and extensive experience in game, dairy and cattle farming we decided to start buying, raising and selling cattle again as a significant business during the Covid lockdown.

At about the same time, the then 15-year-old Zack got his first taste of the Ankole Cattle. He was drawn to the unique characteristics and beautiful features of the Ankole and convinced his uncle, André and his dad Bernard to buy a few.

Two things became obvious to us. Firstly, building our Fire Sky Ankole herd, and ultimately our dream Swanepoel Ankole Stud herd, was not only going to be very expensive and take time, but access to top quality genetics from such a small gene pool was clearly a challenge.

Flowing from this was the second insight, that for our dream to be realised, this space (Ankole breeding and farming) needed to be expanded.

After accumulating a few female animals from auctions and through direct sales, the choice we faced was clear – either we should own and breed Ankole cattle as a hobby or we should own and build an Ankole business. But building a substantial Ankole business appeared daunting and near impossible because of the remarkable scarcity of these animals in SA as well as their limited genetic variety.

By early 2022 we made a bold call – to leverage our existing expertise and facilities and commit to commercial Ankole farming. We modernised and expanded our feedlot and intensive farming facilities to create a one-of-a-kind production facility. This enabled us to produce significant quantities of female Ankole animals of top-quality genetics, whilst simultaneously improving the national herd quality, responsibly and quickly.

We are also expanding the base of ownership by providing new farmers with access to quality animals.