Entering the NSW Beef Spectacular Feedback Trial for about eight years, Russell and Tanya Menzies have recorded their best result to date.
With a Red Angus cross team of steers they scored 697.5 points to place ninth overall, while in the carcase section they placed third on 409.5pts.
Previous to this they had always sat in the top 30 participants with their best performance 5-6 years ago when they placed 16th overall and won reserve Riverine Premium Beef champion pen.
Along with their children Tom, Lucy and Holly, the Menzies run a family operation based at Wirra Park, Mangoplah where they breed crossbred cattle and trade stock.
"We are running a self-replacing herd of around 150 composite breeding cows with a Red Angus, Charolais and Limousin base," Mr Menzies said.
"Generally we trade cattle... we would turn over 1200 head a year which run alongside the breeding stock."
Majority of the Menzies' trade cattle are bought out of Wagga Wagga saleyards or online via AuctionsPlus, with the occasional line coming out of Yass.
"We don't pick on breed, but try and buy framey cattle that will put weight on and get to ideal kill weights - we have all breeds, it is more on an opportunistic basis," Mr Menzies said.
"When buying in we prefer to get cattle at around the 400 kilogram mark, but that is way too dear at the moment, so it has been varying from 250-400kg and the smaller, lighter cattle are kept longer."
The Menzies finish both steers and heifers, predominately on winter crops and grazing canola and barley.
"Around January we start a bit of a feedlot to finish cattle and have cash flow over the summer," he said.
Most are sent direct to Teys for processing and they receive feedback on their trade cattle.
"Our main goal here is growing them to 600kg, or 300-320kg dress weights, to get into the Teys kill market so it is good to have that Euro influence (in the breeding herd) to help get them there quicker," he said.
Entering two teams in the 2022 trial, the Menzies' higher placing team averaged 452kg at induction and gained an average of 1.8kg per head per day.
The steers' average carcase weight was 359.5kg and MSA Index was 63.03. "It is hard to know exactly how to improve," he said. "Some blokes DNA all stock so they can follow it and have some heads up on how bloodlines performed, but we don't do that."
The Menzies uses Hicks Red Angus bulls and have in the past bought Birubi Limousin bulls prior to the stud's dispersal.
"I like buying older cows from dispersal sales with bull calves at foot," he said. "We bought some Donna Valley cattle, and bred some good bulls out of an old cow there.
"Because we have some Charolais and Euro cows they tend to get a bit big, but we want a moderate cow.
"We want an all round bull for calving ease, wide hips, spring of rib, heaps of heart room and they need to walk."
Calving in June it allows for the calves to get bigger by the time it gets to summer.
"In previous years we had been early weaning so we tried to drag forward out calving to get calves bigger before weaning," he said.
The Menzies second team placed 34th.
RELATED READING:
Have you signed up to The Land's free daily newsletter? Register below to make sure you are up to date with everything that's important to NSW agriculture.
