AN expanding beef herd is giving more financial comfort to two generations of the Tippett family who live in the heart of a small pocket of farm land near Peaceful Bay, on the South Coast.
But that was not always the case when Mark joined his parents Ian and Viv on the farm 10 years ago.
Back then the property was smaller and cattle prices were not so generous, encouraging them to look for a sideline to boost their income.
They chose to grow garlic on a commercial scale and found it a labour-intensive venture requiring all three of them to plant 40,000 garlic cloves then weed and harvest the crop by hand before it was graded and marketed.
The first year was a huge learning experience but in the next four years they achieved a degree of automation thanks to Ian’s background as a former Kenyan aircraft engineer.
He designed an implement to roll out weed matting and another with a blade that cut the garlic roots making it easier to pluck them from the ground.
According to Viv it was a lucrative crop if you didn’t count the labour.
The income it generated allowed Mark to buy a 122 hectare block giving them about 700ha, including leased land, in the Peaceful Bay area on which to run cattle.
They grew their final crop of two tonnes of garlic last year, deciding there was too great a conflict between the garlic harvest and the busy cattle time and cattle were far easier.
Mark said they were fortunate to lease several blocks in the tightly-held district.
Most fortunate was that the biggest parcel of land was right on their boundary and came to them as their neighbour was gradually downsizing his cattle operation meaning they could lease portions of the block successively over several years, allowing them to plan for the expansion.
Mark said while the property was on the market, it would be hard to justify buying it as a farming option given its enormous value as real estate.
One of their more distant blocks has a seven-year contract and Mark said the length of the lease meant he could justify putting in the work to have good usable yards and fences.
In recent years it has been a gradual process to build the breeding herd to 400 females to stock the extra country.
Today Mark manages his land holding and stock and Ian and Viv have theirs but they still farm in conjunction as Mark edges towards total management in the future.
It is clear Ian and Viv are firmly entrenched in a lifestyle they enjoy and find rewarding even if, as Ian said, Mark was gradually overruling more of the business decisions.
For Mark, his parents make a good sounding board when discussing ideas and plans for his own venture.
Ian said they ran sheep when they moved to the South Coast more than 30 years ago before starting with a few Simmentals.
As newcomers to Australia they were keen to learn from the locals (and Viv admits they gave their neighbours a few laughs at their expense as they learned) and were told first-cross Angus-Friesian were a good option so they began buying in PTIC heifers.
Today they run a complex, multi-layered breeding herd and aim to breed all their own bulls and replacement females believing good genetics don’t have to be expensive.
The herd comprises mainly 250 F1 females and they are bred using Friesian bulls over a line of pure Angus females.
With the Ravenhill family’s dairy nearby it has been as easy as rearing a poddy bull calf and they look for one that is more compact and will not grow to the immense size of a typical Friesian and require more up-keep.
Viv said they did a trial to compare a line of calves from F1 heifers bought from a Boyanup sale with their own-bred F1 heifers and weight-wise there was no difference.
The F1 heifers are joined to Angus bulls and they run a small one-bull herd to produce their own Angus sires with a good genetic background.
The family will buy in outside genetics but it is often females rather than a bull.
“While we were expanding we bought 10 third and fourth calvers with calves at foot from the Serena Park Angus stud dispersal,” Ian said.
In an effort to build the herd they have been selecting their best second-cross Angus females and Mark said he preferred to run the beefier second-cross or pure Angus females because of their ability to maintain condition through the leaner months.
It is a small example of the differences in ideas that their small degree of separation allows to flourish.
He also has adopted a shorter nine week joining period with heifers calving from early February and the main herd from mid-February, compared to Ian and Viv’s extended 12-week calving window.
Most of the mature herd is joined to Simmental sires and they produce their own working sires from a small nucleus of pure Simmental females.
In the past Ian used embryo transfer but mostly the females are artificially inseminated – this year to a low birthweight New Zealand bull that had good 200-day weight estimated breeding values.
Alternatively, they have sourced stud females and the occasional back-up sire from the local Naracoopa stud.
Ian said they had always stuck with the Simmental breed as a terminal sire because of its hybrid vigour and good growth rates which he estimated added an extra 20 kilograms to the calves based on his close comparisons.
“We use Angus bulls over the heifers but we always find the Simmental calves do a lot better,” he said.
In all their selection temperament is a priority.
They aim to market all their calves directly from the property with the top draft of 180 sold off their mothers directly to Woolworths in late December and early January.
The rest either go to a lot feeder or, in the case of the F1 steers, are carried over until 18 months of age.
Mark said by running the steers for an extra year it gave them the flexibility to quit dry cattle in a hard season or if one of the leased blocks is suddenly sold.
Over the years they have trialled different fertiliser rates and systems and Viv said as a benchmark they knew they could reliably set stock some of their paddocks with a cow and calf unit to 0.9ha and turn off a good calf.
They have always had a good superphosphate regime and although they have tested alternative fertiliser options, they have achieved this stocking rate when applying 180 kilograms a hectare once a year in the autumn.
“We did try up to 350kg/ha and lifted stocking rates to 0.8ha for a cow and calf unit but the inputs were too high,” Viv said.
The property receives about 1000 millimetres rainfall and some of the peat flats become boggy in the wet conditions preventing them from rotational grazing but they always aim to manage the pasture growth at optimal levels late into the summer.
The family also choses to buy in hay but supplementary feeding is kept to a minimum in line with their aim to keep inputs as low as possible.
“The beef cattle don’t require as much feeding as the F1s,” Viv said.
“But you do see the cattle go down in condition but it is also expected their condition fluctuates with the normal seasonal cycle.”
As part of their normal husbandry they will drench the older cattle with a 7in1 vaccine and the calves receive a 5in1 with cobalt being an essential trace element on their lighter country.
With the recent expansion they have been calving down about 70 heifers a year and have been reluctant to cull older cows that are still sound and productive.
Instead they have been hard on dry cows and although they will give heifers a second chance if they have been through a hard season older cows are automatically gone if pregnancy testing shows they are dry.
The consistent culling of dry cows resulted in a 96-97 per cent PTIC rate and was one of their better results.
