Genetic mix boosts market versatility

The Ritchies run a flock of 2100 Merinos and a herd of between 1400 and 1500 Angus breeders on the 2600-hectare family farm Delatite Station, Mansfield, Victoria.

Prior to introducing Charolais bulls as terminal sires, the Ritchies produced only purebred Angus calves, grown out and sold to the feedlot market, with a historical line of Hereford cattle occasionally resulting in the odd black baldy calf.

"We got the sense the purebred Angus steers weren't making a lot of money in what was a tight market, so we thought it would be prudent to spread the risk for our business and target the domestic market as well as the feeder market," Mr Ritchie said.

This will be the fifth year they've joined between 300 and 350 Angus cows to Charolais bulls, a breed the Ritchies chose for its growth and fat coverage.

"Because we were targeting the supermarkets, we wanted something that would finish earlier than the straight Angus cattle," Mr Ritchie said.

"So we wanted to utilise the hybrid vigour of the crossbred animal while still having good fat coverage.

"Jim and Suzy Martin at Welcome Swallow stud, who supply our Angus bulls, were thinking of breeding some Charolais suited to crossbreeding with Angus, so we were able to source the genetics from the bulls they'd bred, which suited what we wanted to achieve."

Generally the older mobs of Angus females at "Delatite" are joined to the terminal sires, with most of the crossbreeding females made up of a mob of 250 cows the Ritchies brought in to run on some leased country.

All the cows are joined from November 15, with heifers given five weeks with the bulls and older cows no more than seven weeks, at a rate of one bull for every 50 females.

The late August calving is timed to coincide with the spring flush of feed, and there's a delicate balancing act to make sure calving doesn't happen too early or too late on the pasture growth curve.

The fertility results of the Charolais bulls have been very similar to the Angus sires, Mr Ritchie said.

"I haven't done the numbers so we don't have the exact figures, but the calving percentages for the cows joined to the Charolais bulls have been no different to the cows joined to Angus bulls," he said.

"We were mindful of the bad reputation the 'old-style' Charolais bulls had for calving difficulties but there's been no increase in calving issues since we started using these bulls."

Weaning time at Delatite Station was dependent on both the seasonal conditions and the condition of the calves themselves, Mr Ritchie said.

In a tight season, calves are weaned in mid-February but in good years will be left on their mothers until they're about six months old and weaned in March.

The calves are yard weaned for 10 days, fed good quality hay and silage before being given a grain mix from Castlegate James in Ballarat, Vic, if the hay and silage hasn't done its job.

"The grain mix is given to the cattle in portable feeders and we fill these every five days or so, with the cattle given ad hoc access to the grain," Mr Ritchie said.

"They get the feed for between six and nine weeks before being backgrounded on pastures."

Both the Angus and the Charolais/ Angus calves are grown out to between 480 and 490 kilograms (live weight) on pastures of perennial ryegrass, clover, sub-clover and a bit of phalaris before the former head north to a Riverina feedlot and the latter south, straight to processors in Melbourne.

"We try to get as many off grass at this weight and about 14 or 15 months of age as we can - if we can get half of them off the property on grass then we're going pretty well," Mr Ritchie said.

Anything that doesn't make the grade in the first draft is finished with grain in an opportunity feedlot system.

Generally the cattle are given no other supplementary feed throughout winter.

At the moment, compared with conditions in NSW and Queensland, Mr Ritchie said they were experiencing a reasonable season.

"We had a very wet winter but a dry spring which cut out early for a very average finish," he said.

"The cattle are still in pretty good condition though."

GRAZIERS Mark and Fenella Ritchie have diversified their formerly pure Angus herd in the past four years with the introduction of a small Charolais crossbreeding program at Delatite Station.

With their purebred Angus steers grown out and sold to a feedlot in NSW, the Ritchies did initially consider going into breeding cattle that, in a particularly tight season, could be turned off the property as store steers and heifers.

"That was something that we'd never done before though - we've always grown the cattle out and tried to get the best performance from them as we could before selling them," Mr Ritchie said.

"We used artificial insemination for the first two years of the crossbreeding program and used the genetics of some pretty handy bulls.

"We wanted to capture the carcase traits of those bulls in their progeny and the best way to do that is to grow the cattle out yourself."

Mr Ritchie stressed while the Charolais infusion into a portion of the Angus herd was a good option for diversifying the production, it was not the "be all and end all".

"This isn't something I'd consider doing across the whole herd - the females would get too big and be harder to get back in calf," he said.

"But it's like using a terminal sire over your Merino ewes - it gives us options and opportunities the purebred Angus don't.

"The beauty of the Charolais-cross is the hybrid vigour, which means we can get the crossbred calves off that little bit quicker than the Angus and bring sales forward.

"It's a good cross and the domestic market really likes them."