Former beef farmers, turned city dwellers, Paul and Amanda Payne, are making a comeback to the industry after a long hiatus that couldn't keep them away from the farming lifestyle.
With both Mr and Ms Payne growing up on commercial beef farms, Mr Payne at Boyanup and Ms Payne at Broomehill, the decision to farm again was an easy one based on the love they have for the land.
After long careers in the geology and nursing fields, the husband-wife duo decided to purchase their own slice of paradise 14 years ago, and returned back to the country permanently seven years ago.
For the past three years they have combined their families' extensive farming histories to push their own herd to success at their Metricup-based property, Paynedale.
Farming across 120 hectares of owned and leased land, the appealing idea of getting back to their roots and living a self-sustaining lifestyle was too hard to pass up, and they haven't looked back since.
Help from Ms Payne's father Tim Walker, who has been heavily involved in the industry for many years and brings a lot of skills to the enterprise, has assisted the Payne's in their farming venture so far.
Also assisting the Payne family with their farm management is local agronomist Brooke Anderson, Agronomy Solutions, and their Boyup Brook-based Nutrien Livestock agent Jamie Abbs.
Since being back on the property, the Payne's have refenced the whole property, built a new home, a workshop, machinery shed and functional cattle yards, as well as prioritising pasture management and landcare.
A drive to originally be self-sustaining in the early days, was soon met with the urge to run and breed their own cattle again, with additionally killing their own beef and lamb for consumption on site.
The pair started out with 24 PTIC heifers, based on Mordallup Angus bloodlines, sourced through the Nutrien Boyanup Supreme Springing Heifer Sale three years ago.
"When we were able to lease a neighbouring property we started to grow our numbers," Mr Payne said.
Now, Paynedale is home to 86 Angus breeders, 16 of which are first calvers from the previous heifer drop that were retained as breeders.
The Angus breed is the perfect fit for the Payne family's breeding program, being a popular breed in their area.
"It was a great starting point for us as there were plenty of breeders in the area we could source and there still are, bulls included," Mr Payne said.
"Their saleability and marketing definitely has an advantage too."
According to the Paynes, the Angus breed's docility and temperament is a very important factor.
"They work really well for us because they are a really docile breed, which is a good trait to have," Ms Payne said.
"We are around our cattle every day, if not twice a day and they have proved to perform well time and time again in our area since we've had them."
Prior to joining, the Paynes make a conscious effort to ensure their cows' condition is maintained.
"We make sure they are in good condition before joining and build up their nutrition, as well as giving them a selenium, Ultravac 7in1 and Marks-Min injection," Mr Payne said.
The Angus sires used at Paynedale are sourced from Blackrock Angus, Vasse, Arkle Angus, Munglinup and Monterey Murray Grey and Angus studs, Karridale.
The bulls are selected based on both Estimated Breeding Values (EBVs) and visual appraisal.
"When we buy bulls we will set a price target and work with it, depending on the purpose we need the bull for," Mr Payne said.
"For instance, in terms of EBVs we will select a low birthweight bull for our heifers, and also make sure all the bulls we select have good docility and growth rates.
"Having a good overall conformation and good feet is also something we will visually assess."
On June 1 each year, the bulls will be joined with heifers and cows, broken down into groups of 35 for eight to 10 weeks.
"Usually we will leave them out for 10 weeks to give the cows a good opportunity to get in calf," Mr Payne said.
The Paynes have seen great results and benefits from pregnancy testing their herd.
"Our current conception rate across the herd is about 90 per cent, which we are working on improving going forward," Mr Payne said.
Post scanning, any animal that is pregnancy tested empty, will be sold to Western Meat Packers, before the 10-week calving period begins in early March.
"As the cows calve, we will draft both mum and calf into a new paddock to keep the pairs together and move them onto new pastures," Ms Payne said.
"Once roughly half of the cows calve, we will mark the calves and then do the same for the other half."
When the youngest of the calves reach six weeks, they will receive their vaccinations based on the Payne's animal husbandry plan, which was drawn up by their supportive veterinarian, Cattle Veterinary Services, Busselton.
"They will receive their Ultravac 7in1 and their Marks-Min vaccines," Mr Payne said.
In terms of farm management, a paddock weaning process is the best fit at Paynedale when the calves are six to eight months old.
"The calves are put in a paddock next to the cows so they can see each other, which works well for us," Ms Payne said.
Within a month after weaning, the weaner steers are sold in the sales at Boyanup in December and January.
"When we sold them recently in the Boyanup sales, they made average weights of 375kg," Mr Payne said.
In the two previous years, the Payne's first two years of farming, the entirety of the heifers progeny was sold, although this year, many of the heifer calves were retained.
"We carried over our heifers this year due to the prices they were getting in the saleyards, and to keep some replacements from," Ms Payne said,
"It really depends on the market, but this year will be our first year choosing replacements," Mr Payne said.
"The aim going forward is to keep some of our heifers to build up our herd numbers rather than buying them in."
Aiming to produce fast-growing weaners, the Paynes said they have recorded specific data and specifically selected heifers that have the potential of producing quick turn-off calves.
"We weigh the weaners so we can record their growth rates, and monitor their size to a certain extent when we are selecting replacement heifers," Mr Payne said.
From this drop of heifers calves, 16 of 38 will be kept as replacement breeders.
"Generally, the calves that the heifers produce have had a lighter bull so we tend not to choose any of the heifer progeny but this year we kept two heifer calves from our first calvers because of their very high growth rates," he said.
When it comes to pasture management and rotational grazing, two programs have played a vital role in the pasture improvement at Paynedale.
"Geocatch is a locally government funded program that is aimed to reduce runoff into estuaries," Mr Payne said.
"The process for this is to do soil testing to help understand nutritional requirements, which means only applying fertiliser where it's needed to efficiently assist in better production.
"We are now soil sampling each year and fertilising accordingly, based on those results."
In addition to that program, the Paynes are also involved in another industry-funded program, the Grazing Matcher system.
"This program has been so helpful, it has assisted us to get a good understanding of pasture management, pasture growth, pasture selection and rotational grazing, as well as animal husbandry systems like fat scoring and how to deal with the autumn-summer feed gap," Ms Payne said.
At Paynedale, the mobs are rotationally grazed roughly every four to five days in winter.
"This depends on the size of the paddocks," Mr Payne said.
"We average roughly 6ha per paddock but some are larger."
Improving feed to get good cattle growth all-year-round is also an important focus.
"Recording data and nutritional values is something that we do," Ms Payne said.
"We will test the nutritional value of hay and silage and make decisions based on that."
Since living at the farm full-time, the Payne family has reseeded a third of the property with a ryegrass-clover mix from Bells Pasture Seeds.
"We will reseed the last portion of the farm this year, it has been working really well so far," Mr Payne said.
"We will start supplementary feed using our own silage that we grow, and hay that we buy in."
Going forward, they aim is to do their own hay on top of the 15ha of silage they grow annually.
"In future we want to do 20 to 25ha of hay and silage combined," he said.
"It has taken us a while to get a gauge on how many cattle we can run feed wise, so as well as increasing our cattle numbers, going forward we want to maximise the potential of our pastures by reseeding and fertilising to improve our production."
