AFTER some 38 years as a veterinary surgeon in his Canberra practice Steve Connell and his wife, Lindy are now fully focussed on their venture of mixed farming in one of Australia’s most picturesque valleys at “Dooroombah”, a little north of Tooraweenah.
Nestled on the western slopes leading off the Warrumbungle range, the 3000 hectare well drained rich loamy alluvial black soil property is currently running 4000 Merinos and 480 Hereford breeders plus a winter cereal cropping program of 1000ha.
“We are now in the process of carefully classing out ewes and breeders so we’ll end up with 3500 sheep and 350 breeders,” Mr Connell said.
The recent wonderful winter rains have assisted the Connell’s culling program and shortened steer and heifer finishing regimes.
Instead of holding them over summer until autumn for finishing they are selling now.
“Because cattle prices have been so advantageous we decided to sell early as the market for weaners is so attractive at present,” Mr Connell said.
While old cows have been selling at Dubbo prime cattle sales Mr and Mrs Connell decided to support last week’s Coonamble store cattle sale and drafted off 100 steers and 30 heifers which met a very strong market.
Their top pen of 15 rising 10 month-old Hereford steers of Kidman blood topped the steer section at $1240 a head while the consignment of steers averaged a healthy $1000.
The heifer portion of 29 head topped at $870.
Mr Connell said he wanted to run an operation of easy care sheep and cattle and he believes Herefords will fill that bill.
“Herefords were here with the purchase and as neighbours around us are running Angus I think we’ll stick to the red and whites as we’ll know who belongs to them,” Mr Connell said.
“I prefer the temperament of Herefords compared to Angus.”
A refencing program is underway while all dams have been cleaned and extended plus new ones built so every paddock now has permanent water.
When the couple were looking for a property “Dooroombah” became available and by coincidence it was one of several properties owned by his family years before.
“My uncle John, known as Jack, owned “Dooroombah” before selling to the Webb family in 1946,” he said.
“But the property ticks all the boxes we were looking for.”
Mr Connell was raised at “Til Til”, Ivanhoe, and won a scholarship when finishing school to study veterinary science at Sydney University and practiced in his surgery at Kaleen, a Canberra northern suburb.