Lifestyle Cattle Yards make handling safer for Neill

Neill’s Te Pari Lifestyle Cattle Yards

Waimate lifestyle farmer Neill Dick has been farming for most of his life and owns two Te Pari yards. His latest set includes the Vario Multi-Purpose Handler. The yards and handler are perfect for his needs, making it easy to operate and load stock in and out!

Neill’s lifestyle block in Waimate, South Canterbury, is setup for handling and weighing cattle safely and efficiently. With 4 hectares at home and another 14 hectares up the road by Kelcey’s Bush, Neill mainly runs cattle and also has around 20 sheep.

“I normally buy Hereford Friesian cross cattle – I find them very good,” says Neill. “The ones we weighed today were doing 1.25 kilos average daily weight gain over the last 52 days. That’s on this 4-hectare block, and we do about the same up at the Kelcey’s Bush block. We do a lot of the weighing through the Te Pari Yard and find them very, very good to use,” Neill says.

Choosing Te Pari Cattle Yards for Lifestyle Blocks

Neill’s relationship with Te Pari goes back more than 15 years. “When I built the cattle yards up the hill on my 14-hectare block, I decided to go with Te Pari. Tom from Te Pari came out and had a look, and he was still around when I did these new yards 15 months ago. I’ve known Tom for about 16 years now,” Neill recalls.

When it came time to set up yards on his smaller block, Neill wanted something compact, safe, and easy to use — a perfect fit for a lifestyle block. He chose the Te Pari Vario Handler, a clever all-in-one unit that functions as both a cattle crush and loading ramp.

“The Vario Handler is excellent,” Neill says. “I load a lot of stock – sheep and cattle – through my horse float or trailer, and with another half dozen winds, you can load a stock truck. It’s very easy to work, very easy and practical. You can handle anything from small calves right up to 600kg cattle, no problem at all.”

Learn more about the Vario Multi-Purpose Handler

Lifestyle Cattle Yards That Are Easy to Install and Use

Te Pari’s lifestyle cattle yards are designed specifically for smaller farms and lifestyle properties like Neill’s. The small steel yards are available as an easy-to-install kitset, making setup simple while maintaining the strength, safety, and durability that Te Pari is known for.

Neill also uses a Te Pari weigh platform and load bars that he can move between both properties. “It’s great — I just put it in the race whenever I want to, then store it away in the shed when I’m not using it. It’s easy to take from this yard to the bigger block up at Kelcey’s Bush.”

Te Pari have everything you need to set up for weighing cattle, the weigh platform, load bars and a range of weigh scale indicators as well. 

Shop our range of weighing equipment 

Built for Quality, Safety, and Long-Term Value

Te Pari is a brand widely recognised for its quality, innovation, and safety in livestock handling equipment. And if you ever decide to move on, your Te Pari Yard will maintain a very high resale value — a reassuring benefit for any lifestyle farmer investing in top-quality infrastructure.

“I would definitely recommend Te Pari to anyone thinking of building a yard,” says Neill. “Whether it’s for a lifestyle block or a big run block, they’re just very good to deal with.”

Watch the video from Neill!