Eight Acres

We are only new to the cattle industry, and I may get some of the terminology wrong in this post, but I was hoping to explain a few things that I've learnt about the cattle industry in Australia.  Broadly speaking, there are three different types of cattle operations.  The first is “cow and calf”, where you own a number of cows and a bull, aim to produce one calf from each cow per year, and either fatten the calves or sell at weaning age.  This leads to the second type, which is to buy those weaners and fatten them to feed-lot size.  Finally, some very dedicated and skilled individuals will chose to run a stud, producing consistent pure-bred cattle, particularly bulls, which may be purchased by cow and calf operations as breeding stock.  Each type of operation has its pros and cons and the one that’s best for you will depend on your land, your available time, and knowledge of cattle, and of course you can have a bit of a mixture if you want to.  our pen o...

It may seem strange that we bought our herd of Braford cows without knowing much about the breed, but when we decided that we wanted to buy cows, it was more important to us to find a herd of a consistent breed in the local area on a (cattle) tick-free property, than worry about specific breeds.  If we had done all the research at the start and had our heart set on a breed, chances are we would never have found a herd of cows in that particular breed.  When we started looking at the Brafords, we found out a little about the breed and they seemed to be suitable for our property, so we went ahead and bought them. By coincidence, an acquaintance of ours happened to own a book called “The Australian Braford”, which was published by the Australian Braford Society to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of the breed in 1987.  The book details all the early stud breeders and, more importantly, the origins of the breed itself.  I found it absolutely fascinating to find o...

Our new Braford bull was delivered to Cheslyn Rise on Saturday morning.  His name is Maus, because he's quiet as a mouse.  So far he has lived up to his name.  He looked a bit worried when he got of the truck and he did a few circles of the yard, but he didn't get agro at us.  Then the girls came over to see him and he got very excited.  The final photo is the face he made when he smelt the cows.  He is six year old and came from a friend who also breeds Brafords, although he's originally from a stud.  Its a bit scary having a bull in the paddock now, so we hope he stays quiet for us!

I wrote recently about how we were intending to raise steers on Cheslyn Rise with a long term plan to buy a herd of cows to breed cattle, so that we weren't tied to buying and selling through the sale yards.  We were on the look out for a suitable herd, but never expected to find them so quickly!  We are quite picky, we wanted to buy an established herd of about 20 cows that had been together for a few years, they had to be all one breed, and a breed that was suitable for our property, and they were preferably from a cattle tick-free area, so that we didn't have to pay to have them inspected for ticks. Farmer Pete had been looking on farmstock for cattle, just to keep an eye on prices, when he found a herd of about 20 Braford cows and calves for sale near Wondai, which is tick-free.  So off we went to have a look at the herd.  The owner wasn't actually sure how many cows were there (and they are very difficult to count, as they don't stand still).  Ev...