Yathroo a family affair for the Greys

Murray is the fourth-generation to farm and runs their 2300 hectare property with his wife Adele and three children.

He is from a pastoral background with his family owning Glenflorrie station in the West Pilbara that is spread over 197,000 hectares and is now managed by his sister Aticia.

The running of the operation is very much a family affair with Murray's parents, Peter and Susan, Aticia and her partner Adam, wife Adele and father-in-law Colin, all being involved in the business.

They purchased their first farming property 'Merejida' in 2004 as part of a drought mitigation strategy for the station.

It was pivotal to the family in this capacity as they managed through the dry years at the station of 2007, 2010 and more recently 2019.

In 2014 Murray and Adele moved from the station to focus on better managing the farming operation.

In 2017 they bought the adjoining property 'Tarallcaral' in partnership with Colin.

Now they have a grazing enterprise which has mostly been backgrounding and finishing pastoral cattle from Glenflorrie and other properties opportunistically.

Cattle brought onto the property are usually about the 200-240 kilogram mark with the aim to grow them to 320-400kg.

The family also runs 100 breeders (80 cows and 20 replacement heifers) and share-farms with Adele's father who has a herd of 150 Angus/Red Angus/Murray Grey breeders.

Their cattle are predominantly Brahman, with some Bos Taurus crosses, which they sell into the live export trade.

When it comes to sourcing their cattle, the family has a bull replacement herd that was started in 1995 by purchasing 16 cows from a Brahman stud in Queensland.

After the purchase of the Yathroo property, the herd was moved south from the station for ease of management.

In 2013 the stud was deregistered as a result of the live export ban and uncertainty for the future of the export market.

The herd continues to produce bulls for Glenflorrie, with genetics being sourced from Queensland.

When buying bulls, the Greys select for temperament, fertility and muscle structure.

"Temperament is very important to us especially with the whole family being very hands-on in the business," Murray said.

Having focused heavily on fertility over the past 10 years, he said they were seeing herd improvements.

To maintain their ideal herd, the Greys are strict when it comes to culling.

Every animal is tagged with NLIS within its first six months and the information recorded against those tags is used to assist with measuring fertility and performance.

They also cull for age, keeping the cows until 10 years of age and the bulls for eight years.

Joining of the heifers begins in mid-August for an eight week period, while the bulls are put in with the cows in mid-September for nine weeks.

Calving begins in May-June to coincide with the break of the season to ensure there is plenty of feed for the cows and heifers.

"Going any earlier means we would have to supplement feed right through that peak lactation period in late breaking seasons," Murray said.

When selling their cattle the Greys are not locked into any specific market, allowing them to be flexible and sell when the best opportunities arise.

"We try not to pigeon hole ourselves into one market, that said we have very good relationships with a couple of buyers and work with them as much as possible," he said.

In the longer-term, they are aiming to produce nutrient-dense beef for consumers looking for a high quality, nutritional product.

With market prices soaring this year, there are no complaints from the Greys, though Murray said (tongue in cheek) he would have preferred values to be higher in 2019 when it was a tougher year.

He believes that the current prices are an indication of where the Australia cattle herd currently sits, after being decimated by prolonged drought conditions on the east coast.

"Interstate producers are now in the recovery phase and pushing prices up," Murray said.

Although there are immediate benefits for producers with these high prices, he is concerned about the industry's future.

Murray's first concern is that producers are pricing themselves off the consumer's plate and second is that the buying pressure from the Eastern States has caused WA's herd numbers to drop.

He said WA farmers don't readily have the ability to buy cattle back from the east, so they have to rely on breeding their way back up.

As for seasonal conditions, 2019 was a tough year for the Greys with all their rainfall falling in a very short period.

"It was probably the single most challenging season I have ever encountered in my time farming," Murray said. "The season here was a very late break, we had a very dry finish."

Compounding the already difficult season was the fact that the station was also suffering what would turn into two of the driest consecutive years on record.

As a result of the dry conditions on the station Murray received a large influx of cattle which added enormous extra pressure to their feed budget.

"Subsequently, we were substitute feeding cattle all of this past summer," he said.

To help put weight on the cattle the Greys did some feedlotting, but Murray said it was not something he would like to continue doing.

"We received a lot of stock from the station that were low condition score so we had to get them to a decent sale weight," he said.

"The market was saturated with store cattle, so we were trying to lift their condition enough to sell them into a slightly higher value market.

Murray said they outsourced their hay and struggled last year to get their hands on bales, having to buy from wherever they could.

"We bought hay from Geraldton in the north to Pingelly in the south, we were lucky to have some mates step up and sell hay to us when supply got tight," he said.

This year Murray said that they received slightly less rainfall than in 2019 but it was more consistent and fell at the right times.

"It just fell at more advantageous times and it has made a huge difference," he said.

With the better rainfall patterns more feed was available with nearly double the amount of pasture growing.

Having the extra feed meant they were able to take on some external backgrounding cattle, which is something they have done in the past and will look to continue doing.

As a result of consecutive dry seasons the family recently destocked the station which means Murray won't have any stock coming from there next year.

"It will be interesting going into the open market; trading and backgrounding will be our main objective," he said.

"This year gave us the chance to start building confidence with suppliers."

Regardless of the seasonal conditions, water is not a concern, thanks to high water volumes from three aquifers.

"We are very lucky to have such good water security," Murray said.

When the Greys first purchased the property there was 700 hectares of established Tagasaste, to which they added a further 100ha, however, 90pc of it has started to die off.

They are replacing it with subtropical perennial pastures, mainly Reclaimer Rhodes grass and Megamax Panic grass.

"We've also started planting cereal based winter pastures that are purely for grazing," Murray said.

Moving forward the Greys are striving to maximise their pasture production, starting with ameliorating their soil.

"The limiting factor for us is the soil, we are primarily farming on white non-wetting sand," he said.

Due to their previous efforts being blown away during warmer months of the year, any further amelioration of the soil will occur during winter.

"We won't be doing anything before the ground's damp," he said.

"Ultimately the goal is to get perennial grasses across the whole property and take advantage of the winter conditions," Murray said.

This year their pasture varieties included Triticale, barley, oats and Serradella, with the plan being to expand that blend in the coming years.

"I am focusing my efforts on building a year-round pasture production system," Murray said.