TERRY Salmeri and his family are going down the all black path with their cattle herd at Boddington.
Cattle haven’t always been in the farming equation for the Salmeris, with the family starting off with Merinos when Terry’s parents bought their farm in 1966.
The first herd of cattle was introduced to the enterprise about 20 years ago.
“We always had Merino sheep before that and we still do, but the cattle are a nice addition to the livestock set up here,” Terry said.
“The main reason for getting into cattle was because we’re on the Hotham River and some of the country around that isn’t ideal for running sheep.
“So we decided to introduce cattle and the infrastructure for cattle, fences and yards and so on was already in place which meant it wasn’t a big hassle to get a few cattle onto the place.”
Terry and his family run a herd of mostly Angus with a few greys and whites thrown in the mix.
“We use all Angus bulls because we want to move the herd towards all black cattle,” Terry said.
Over the years, the Salmeri herd has grown to 250 head of breeders which are spread across the home block and some leased country.
“It does keep me busy but it’s good, I enjoy working with the cattle,” Terry said.
“When things are good and there’s grass everywhere, they’re not hard work at all.
“It did get a bit tough last year when there wasn’t much pasture around the place and we had to buy hay in, but this season has gone quite well so far.”
Terry said the pasture earlier this year was looking average, but the stock have come through reasonably well.
“You can see the cows are in pretty good order now, even though they were pretty skinny when they calved through April to June,” he said.
“They’ve bounced back well which is good to see.”
Quality genetics in the breeding herd have no doubt aided the robustness of the cattle in the Salmeri family herd.
“We’re using Angus bulls from the Gandy family and have been for about 10 years,” Terry said.
“They’ve certainly performed well for us.
“We did have the odd Murray Grey bull but for the last five or six years we’ve only bought Angus bulls.
“Now all the replacement females are blacks and even though we get the odd really nice grey, the focus is on the blacks now.”
Market demand is where the all black focus comes from for Terry.
“The plan is to go black because people want them, so they’re easy to sell,” he said.
“Our stock agent Ben Kealy at Landmark can always find a home and a good price for the blacks.
“I’ll pick out my best heifers, which will be maybe 10 or 15 that I’ll use as replacements and the rest are always easy to find a home for.”
The calves which are turned off the Salmeri property often go to fatteners or as future breeders.
When it comes to selecting his own replacements out of the annual heifer drop, Terry said he looked for all the typical quality markers.
“Obviously a little bit of size is important,” he said.
“Also all the usual carcase traits but when you’ve been breeding for as long as we have I don’t think you can really go wrong when you’re selecting replacements.
“Sometimes it can be a bit difficult to pick just 10 or 15, because you could easily pick 20 or 25 if you wanted to.”
On the bull selection front, Terry said he doesn’t mind leaving that to his agent.
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“Ben knows cattle – I don’t mind telling him that,” he said with a laugh.
“We do look at the figures because things like low birthweight for example are pretty important.”
But Terry wasn’t too worried about quick growth rates.
“We start off calving at the end of March through to May and a little bit into June and then we try and sell them in early December,” Terry said.
“There are also a lot of feedlot sales in January so if they haven’t been placed yet, that is where they’ll end up.
“So the steers might end up there but as I said Ben can always find a place for them so we’ve never really had to worry about finding somewhere for them at turn-off time.”
The main focus for turning off in the early summer is about getting the calves off their mums and giving the cows plenty of time to recover before going back in with the bulls, rather than worrying about achieving specific weight goals.
“This year the cows won’t need too much recovery time though, looking at the size of them,” Terry said.
“But generally if they’re all off by mid-January I’m happy.
“And this year looking at the grass we’ve got, we shouldn’t have too many issues so there will be no rush to get them off.”
Terry typically sends the calves straight off their mothers which was an ease of management thing.
“It’s easier for us because we just don’t have the paddocks where we can lock calves away without mum getting back to them,” he said.
“But we do go into the weaned sales so we’ll yard wean for about a week or 10 days on feed and water and then we let them go.
“That said, sometimes I’ve yard weaned the calves and then taken them to another lease block which I’m looking at doing again in the future.”
Terry has another lease block in the Boddington district, as well as a block at Mundijong which has plenty of grass available this year.
“The cattle at the Mundijong block are up to their bellies in grass at the moment so I’m thinking I might wean some calves and take them down to the Mundijong block to value add,” he said.
Terry said he tried to get the calves off in a few drafts but having a good relationship with his livestock agent helped.
“As I’ve said, Ben always places the cattle well so I put a lot of faith in him,” he said.
Going forward, Terry said the family is always on the lookout for more land but at the moment, cattle numbers are pretty good and the focus will be on continuing to move towards an all black herd.
“Nothing against the greys, but as I’ve said it’s certainly easy to market black cattle,” Terry said.