WHITEFACE cattle are run alongside Merino sheep at Woomargama Station and both have to pay their way.
The operation joins about 600 cows annually in a program designed around turning off the greatest amount of beef from the available pasture on the 2600 hectare station south of Holbrook.
Nick Wragge has managed the property since 2012 and said there has been a slight increase in cattle numbers to take advantage of the current market.
“Cattle at the moment are ahead when it comes to profit, but historically that is not always the case,” he said.
“Certainly in the last two or three years cattle have been more profitable of the two.”
At present the livestock split is 60 per cent cattle and 40pc sheep. One of the key moves in managing the herd in the past two years has been to artificially inseminate all heifers, despite the operation being totally commercially focused.
The heifers are AI’d in November, in a blanket AI program, to calve down in August the following year.
Once the AI is performed, a back-up bull goes out with them a week later and will stay there for about four weeks.
Heifers are joined slightly earlier and are AI’d at 15-months to calve down as two year-olds.
He said there are two main reasons for introducing an AI program to the operation.
“The first reason is to hopefully fast-track our genetic improvements,” Mr Wragge said.
“We also want to tighten up the heifer joining so we are getting the more productive animals which cycle early, get in calf early and are productive early.
“We are tightening our calving dates up for further down the track, too, so the heifers go back into calf again the second time round and hopefully breeding shorter gestation lengths into our herd .”
The success of the blanket AI program – with 70 per cent of heifers getting in calf to AI in their first two tries – means they may consider using it over cows this year.
The herd is EU accredited so steers are sold at 14 months into the feedlot market at about 400 to 450 kilograms. At present no steers are sold over the hooks.
“In this country we would struggle to get steers up to heavier kill weight over summer,” Mr Wragge said.
“We are better suited to breed high quality steers up to feeder weight, move them on so we can carry more cows over that summer period.
“If we were to push the steers through summer and get them up to kill weight we would have to back our breeding DSE’s back on either sheep or cows.”
