BEEF cattle producers Sally McGlashan and Robert Matthews, Dubbo, are focused on temperament and fertility within their Angus herd, which they say has helped the longevity of their female lines.
The business partners established their operation, Keicha, in 2002, which includes five properties that total 4047 hectares.
Ms McGlashan said they normally run as many as 700 breeding cows, but like most people "had to drop numbers during drought".
As a solely beef cattle operation, breed was important. Originally, Keicha had Santa Gertrudis-cross cows.
Ms McGlashan said "as much as we liked them, they were not as commercial for us", so the transition to Angus began and "being black, people just wanted them".
"The Santas are still definitely marketable, especially around Dubbo, but the main push we found was for Angus," she said.
The herd is self-replacing, which is a viable option according to Ms McGlashan who said it simply "just easier to breed them".
"Some of our females are five and six generations old which is a lot when we have only been operating for 20 years," she said.
Paddock matings are the preferred breeding option in the Keicha operation, with bulls both bought in from outside studs and some bred on-farm.
Among those purchased in recent years was a son of the $160,000 Millah Murrah Paratrooper P15, with its first calves expected this year.
She also has purchased numerous bulls from Te Mania, Mortlake, Vic, and Kidman Angus, Dubbo.
Ms McGlashan said she targeted good growth rates and animals with good selection indices.
This was backed by clear female selection policies, with soundness, temperament and fertility at the top of the list.
Ms McGlashan was a believer of having a strict set of selection criteria around which stock were culled, and for her, "first and foremost would be temperament".
"I want my job to be enjoyable and fun, and especially safe and obviously those animals that tend to stir up the rest and can be hard on the gear," she said.
Fertility was also central, Ms McGlashan saying "my game is breeding cattle, and if they cant breed then they don't have a future here".
She had to balance this with labour considerations, so each year about 250 replacement heifers were joined to calve at two.
Due to the numbers joined annually, and it only being Ms McGlashan managing the stock, she spread the calving out.
She did this by joining a few heifers every two to three months to enable her to share the feed around and share the bulls around.
Heifers were joined at a 20 females per bull for younger bulls and up to 30 heifers a bull for mature bulls, while cows are joined at 80 cows to one bull.
"Obviously he won't be serving them all at once, with the staggered calvings," Ms McGlashan said.
Continual joinings throughout the year had its positives, as it allowed some animals to be held off and grown out to bigger joining weights.
"I have some older heifers that were a bit small coming out of the drought, so they can be held off and grown out more," she said.
It also means weaning is easier and instead of doing 400 to 500 calves at once, they are broken up throughout the year.
Calves were weaned at five to seven months as Ms McGlashan liked to use the opportunity of early weaning to promote rumen development.
Ms McGlashan weaned her calves across a 12-day program, during which they were placed on hay and had to learn how drink from a trough (most of their farms had dams) and learn how to go through the yards.
"This time is the last chance to make records on the calves, and see who the mothers are then cross check with past calvings to see how the mother is breeding.
"Obviously if there is a cow that hasn't produced as well in the last few years we take a good look at her and make a decision."
While weaner steers are the business' main output, they also sell pregnancy-tested-in-calf cows, providing they had a surplus.
"The majority go through the Dubbo store sales, as we are not very far away from the saleyards and we do often have repeat buyers," Ms McGlashan said.
Ms McGlashan has cattle in almost every Dubbo store sale throughout the year.
"I do some private on-farm sales, but the yards the generally make really good money so it's a leveller."
"A lot of people think I'm mad for not finishing the steers, but their mothers are already back in calf and I keep the sisters anyway so it is easier to sell them young and not have more inputs."
The females, meanwhile, are run on a grazing rotation which includes tropical species such as premier digit and seradella.
