Getting Started. Unfamiliar Teritory

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Sun, 12/23/2012 - 11:04 #1

Member for

11 years 10 months
JRCradock
Last seen: 03/08/2018 - 21:05
Joined: 12/23/2012 - 10:20

Getting Started. Unfamiliar Teritory

Hi All,

Firstly i would like to say i am glad i stumbled across this site, champion idea to be able to commute and discuss with fellow small farmers and experts. Thankyou

I have just bought my first property with my Fiancee down in the lovely South East Tassie. 11 acres of Great Soil, Awesome yearly rainfall, and perfect living condition in which i would like to eventually expand and buy neighbouring property in later years to produce more livestock.

The problem in which i have is i am a QLD boy, done alot of Farming and attended Ag College in the Burdekin and have a fair bit of knowledge of Agriculture for the arid tropic area, but have not a clue on what type of cattle would be best suited down this way. we bought this property in Tassie cause my fiancee is originally from Kingston Tasmania and her family is from there and i was happy enough to move away from the tropic heats to a more chilled climate to start a familly.

So my question would be what breed of cattle would be best suited for this area for meat and milking purposes? Also how would i go about starting of a heard that i can expand on when land comes available?

Any help on the matter or contacts that you may know of that could help with this new venture would be much appreciated

 

Cheers

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Wed, 12/26/2012 - 14:26 #2
rogermartyn
Last seen: 03/08/2018 - 21:05
Joined: 10/20/2011 - 16:16

Hi JR

Welcome to the forums

Your Qld experience is bound to be of use to all of us. My tropo experience for example is nill!

Regarding what beef cattle will be suitable, basically, anything in the English breeds should be fine. When you think about it, the climates in which they were bred are similar to where you will be farming.

I suggest one of your first considerations be to consider how big an animal the land / soils can take. If your soils are prone to pugging, or a heavy, or the topography is rugged, it would pay to steer clear of larger framed breeds. You will be much better off with smaller framed animals irrespective of what the weight gain data for larger breeds say.

If you're looking for beef /milking, it is going to depend on how fussy you want to be about your breeding lines.

You could look at dual purpose 'pure' breeds like the Milking Shorthorns, Red or South Devons, or even the Dexter (smaller but versatile and easy to handle).

The Aussies own Illawarra Red would also be a good choice, an excellent milker, and good confirmation as a beef animal, not overly large, good temperament.

Alternatively look at cross breeding from milkers. Not necessarily as pretty on the eye, but unlikely to impact negatively on the pocket, and quite possibly cheaper to get into and achieve what you want.

If you're looking at larger animals, get Frisian cows and cross with an Angus or Hereford bull. The Hereford is likely to throw a slightly larger animal and the progeny of both will really pile on the kg's meat wise, especially if you have the skills and courage to go down the bull-beef line of production and all the animal psychology and handling skills this will require!

If you're looking at lighter animals, get Jersey cows and cross with Angus or Hereford bull. You could also mate the Jersey with on of the 'small beef breeds' like the Dexter. Whatever you do, don't mate the Jersey cow with a 'large' beef breed animal (eg Charolais) or you'll have calving problems you don't want to know about.

You can keep the first cross dams for herd building purposes, and continue to cross these out again to a beef breed, or cross in again to a milking breed with good results. If at some time you wanted to 'revert' to pure the breed of the milker ( or beef for that matter), you would keep crossing back the dam progeny to the desired breed and by the 5th cross, or all intents and purposes, they're genetically pure although in practice, by the third cross, you'd be hard put to see they're not pure bred. Cross breeding 'in and out' also maintains hybrid vigour although this has been done for so many years now with these breeds that I question if it is in fact still a factor in the genetics.

Finally, any good milking breed will make good eating for home-kill purposes so don't think that you need a beef bred just for the eating. Even a Jersey is good eating although the fat tends to look a bit more 'yellow' than others which puts some off.

Where the animal is raised to be 'hooked', and turned into hamburgers, the colour of its skin won't matter a damn. Where the animal is raised to be on-sold to others, then it can make a difference as people have the buying prejudices. Note also, Frisian cattle have impressive beef weight gain characteristics even as pure breeds. At the risk of been caned, I've been told that the overriding criteria of the buyers for a certain hamburger corporate giant for pure-bred Angus hamburger meat is basically any bovine animal with a good hint of black in it!

Hope this helps. Would be good to hear from others to see if they've got other ideas and comments particularly regarding beef types and the market prices paid for say Frisian beef meat compared to meat from dedicated beef breeds like the Angus.

All the best with your new adventure

Roger Martyn

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