O’Neills at Maewa
Brothers Pat and Tom O’Neill purchased Maewa Station from the Crown in 1908. It was clear felled of native bush over a 20 year period. The family enjoyed a most successful centenary on the Station in 2008.
Subsequent properties were purchased by Pat and Tom at Turakina in 1913 and Fordell in 1918.
Tom was a bachelor and lived on the station from 1908 until his death in 1950.
Pat’s son Pat (our father) started running the business from 1950. Significant development of the station took place under his stewardship in the 70’s and 80’s including subdivision, tracking, dam building, scrub-cutting, re-grassing and fertilizer, resulting in a highly productive hill country station.
More recently the family have purchased three neighbouring farms at Turakina and Santoft, with the fourth generation son’s Tim and Sam running these properties.
We share the same passion as the Redmaynes of Tunnel Hill for producing quality lambs on coastal country and feel privileged to have been asked by Richard to contribute to what promises to be a highly successful venture.
Maewa Station
Maewa Partnership is a third generation O’Neill Family farming business comprising 5042 hectares. It is run by brothers Pat (married to Catherine with children Tim, Sarah and Nikki), Mike (married to Anne Marie with children Bridget, Sam, Alanah and Tom) and Chris (married to Linda with children Caitlin, Michael and Daniel).
Maewa Station is a 3143 hectare hill country property situated on the Parapara Highway midway between Wanganui and Raetihi. The Station is complemented by coastal finishing and cropping properties at Turakina (1309 ha), Fordell (357 ha) and Santoft (233 ha).
We run 18000 ewes with 13000 farmed on the station. 5000 are mated on the coastal blocks at Turakina and Fordell, and these lamb in July.
We winter up to 2000 Angus, Angus/Hereford steers with R 2yr steers on the station and R 3yr steers on the feedlot at Santoft being finished on maize silage and baleage on a winter finishing contract.
We grow 320 hectares of maize, comprising 160 hectares of maize grain, 70 hectares of maize silage for our own use on the Santoft feedlot and 90 hectares of maize silage for sale to the Dairy Industry. The maize is grown in the Turakina and Whangaehu valleys with fertile flats consistently yielding 14 tons per hectare of grain and 21 tons per hectare of silage.
We have an annual re-grassing programme of 80 hectares to give consistent quality of feed for lamb and beef finishing. A further 100 hectares of chicory and/or hunter are sown for lamb finishing.