Top Santa Gertrudis breeder’s endless search for perfection

The walls of Amy Williams’s office on Scotston farm in Mpumalanga are adorned with photographs of prize-winning animals, testimony to their owner’s 45-plus years of cattle-breeding skills. And the accolades, it seems, are not stopping any time soon. This year, her bull DJW 17 029 was nominated for an Agricultural Research Council Platinum Bull award.

Hailing from Scotland, and with a family heritage of cattle farming going back 800 years, Williams married a South African and found herself on a farm in Barberton in the early 1970s. While her husband continued tobacco farming, she took up cattle breeding, starting with Brahman crosses.

“My husband’s father was talked into buying a Santa Gertrudis bull. When we weaned the calves, the weights were better from the Santa Gertrudis side. I started adding a few