Godolphin may be a household name within the horse racing industry, but many may not know the other aspects of the operation including a beef cattle herd at their Woodlands site.
The global thoroughbred horse racing team and breeding operation founded by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, use the cattle as a great tool for managing pastures and breaking worm cycles which reduced the need for machinery or chemical.
Woodlands stud farm manager, Phillip Harris, said Godolphin was producing racing athletes so feed needed to be kept at the optimum for the horses.
"The cattle are used as tools and that is a thing from the past; when there is bigger horse numbers, there is less cows, and when there are less horses, there are more cows," he said
Joining about 750 Charolais cows this year, there were about 1300 head on the property which included steers that had been held over and grown out.
"We do have some agistment cattle here too, obviously due to the feed quantity and filling the gap," Mr Harris said.
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Dating back to the 1800s, there had always been cattle run in conjunction with the horses and for at least the last 50 years, they had been a Charolais breeding herd.
Using predominantly Palgrove Charolais bulls for the past 15 years, a lot of the female base contained primarily Palgrove blood due to a self-replacing focus.
"We do just try and breed our own replacements," Mr Harris said.
In more recent years, Mr Harris said the structure of the cattle operation had been 'changed up'. Still breeding purebred Charolais females for replacements, any that weren't kept were joined to Angus and Speckle Park bulls to make an earlier finishing steer for the operation.
"We don't have to keep them (crossbred steers) through to 18 months or two years, we can turn them off at 12-15 months and that is the plan; to finish them earlier," Mr Harris said.
Where the farm is situated, the Hunter River flows through the middle which acted as a form of separation between the core Charolais breeding herd of about 200 females, and the cows joined to the other bulls.
"They are still Charolais and that's the idea; anything we want to cull out of the Charolais breeding herd, we just pull them across to the other side of the river to be joined to a non-Charolais bull basically," Mr Harris said.
"They may be still a good animal and a good mother but they may just not have the traits that we want when you go through the culling process.
"That seems to work quite well and it keeps them being home bred as well."
Maintaining the core herd of about 200, there were enough purebred calves born each year to act as the female replacements.
"That gives us enough to pick out 50 replacement heifers every year and then the others are crossed,"Mr Harris said.
Not targeting a specific market for the stock, their livestock agent made recommendations about what was available when the cattle were ready.
"Even about this time last year, they were worth more in the saleyards than if they were going straight to an abattoir so it is that scenario; the agent does his job so we send them to where he recommends," he said.
There is also a large work health, and safety (WHS) emphasis which means cattle were culled quite heavily for temperament.
"We try to lead the industry with our WHS which is quite big as farming goes so that is why the animals need to be so approachable," Mr Harris said.
Bad feet had also been an issue in the past, which Mr Harris said was one of the biggest things he had culled for.
"I guess it is the same sort of process as any farm, your replacement heifers have to be a fairly soft, sound animal so if they have any feet issues or they are narrow, we will cull them," he said.
Aiming to have about 100 replacements to select from each year, Mr Harris said he can cull very hard with the females.
"A few years ago, when we were trying to build numbers, whatever was female was rejoined but particularly this year we have got out of that scenario, and we will now join animals and even sell them as in-calf heifers if we don't want them," he said.
Heifers were joined at about 14 months as long as they were over 320kg, to calve just under two.
"We have been doing that now for a few years and we use to join at two years so they were calving at three but when the vet came to preg-test she could hardly reach them because they were so big," Mr Harris said.
"We probably have less calving issues with the smaller animals compared to the big animals because they tended to be more fat and lazy."
Stocking rates fluctuated too much based on the demand of the horses, but Mr Harris said his personal goal was to have the 700 breeders and then substitute with agistment of steers.
That way, the steers were able to be put on when there was an abundance of feed, and then if the year was dry, agistment wouldn't be taken on.
As a fully grass-fed operation, about 70 hectares of oats is sown each year to help finish steers while 270ha was undersown for horses but was maintained by the cattle.
"The cattle will eat the areas horses wont eat as well, it just saves us running around with tractors and slashers," Mr Harris said.
"Although we are mainly a thoroughbred farm, the cattle operation complements that and is a great income source in the right conditions."
