Geoff Nicol’s commitment to educating his cattle is just one of the keys to producing more kilos of beef on the 4400-hectare, Ninderra, 25km west of Injune.
Geoff and his parents, Ian and June, left their cropping country near Moree, NSW, five years ago to buy Ninderra, where they run 470 Santa Gertrudis-British cross breeders and around 1000 feeder cattle.
The Nicols have invested in new fencing and watering points, and focused on reducing labour costs, increasing herd fertility through buying only bulls with fertility EBVs, and fine-tuning supplementary feeding through the use of faecal analysis.
Their businesslike approach to cattle production is paying off. Quiet, educated cattle mean Geoff can handle much of the stock work on his own or with his fiancé, Lyndal Rolfe and their Kelpie and Collie sheep dogs.
A lot of time is spent educating weaners and bought-in cattle until they’re quiet, working them first in the yards and through the race each day and then regularly handling them in paddocks.
“It’s like training a dog – cattle have to develop a memory of how to respond so that they’re happy and relaxed to have me on a horse and the dogs around,” Geoff said.
Ninderra is a mix of quality vine scrub country running through to undulating Brigalow/Belah, and containing a steep spur of the Great Dividing Range.
Initially Geoff found the cattle overgrazed the lower country in summer, leaving the grass on the steeper slopes to grow rank before they moved up there in winter. He’s begun a program of fencing to enable rotational grazing rather than set stocking, to use the grass more efficiently.
Geoff recently took part in trials of supplementary feeding through the Department of Agriculture in Roma. Using faecal analysis they measured crude protein, faecal nitrogen and forage digestibility to show whether feeder cattle benefitted from a urea-based dry lick in winter.
The results were surprising. In a dry 2013, every dollar the Nicols’ spent on lick returned them $2. But in 2014, when March rain meant there was short green feed, there were no gains from the lick.
“I remember one business analyst saying that people often feed lick to make themselves feel better, and the faecal analysis certainly takes the guesswork out of it,” Geoff says.
Feeder cattle are run on the higher quality Gayndah buffel, with the steers turned off at 470kg and the heifers at 400-450kg to local feedlots.
Breeders are run on Biloela buffel and Geoff aims to have them at score 3 or 3+ at calving. He’s focused very heavily on breeding for fertility, with the result that when the season crashed in 2013 the cow herd still tested 88% in calf – the result of fertile cows, body score and strategic supplementation, he says.
Santa Gertrudis bulls are strictly selected for their EBVs relating to fertility - days to calving, scrotal circumference and semen morphology - and that’s cleaned up the herd very quickly, says Geoff. Heifers are joined at 14 months for a short period of 60 days, or 90 depending on the season.
