OVERWHELMING was the only way Rick Greenup could describe the feeling he felt after his and wife Alice's first combined bull sale in Eidsvold on Friday.
The young couple, who also have three children - Ruby, 6, James, 4, and Rory, 2 - started the Greenup Santa Gertrudis Stud about eight years ago.
They have been in the process of purchasing the historic Eidsvold Station Santa Gertrudis Stud for four years and have combined the two to now run one of the largest stud Santa Gertrudis herds in the country.
The Greenups, who live at Cardowan, Kumbia, are also in the process of purchasing the four properties which make up the 14,500-hectare Eidsvold Station, a transaction which will be complete by next July.
While they have held individual sales of both studs for three years, Friday was the first combined sale. They achieved an amazing result - a 100 percent clearance of the 95 bulls on offer, a huge crowd, a top of $24,000 and cracking average.
The success of the sale was not lost on Mr Greenup, who caught up with Queensland Country Life.
"It was awesome. Just the support from a lot of friends and very good clients that have had the bulls was great," he said.
"We're still in the process of purchasing Eidsvold Station... it's been a massive, massive transition. We've been buying the cattle for the last four years, we make our last cattle payment after this sale which has been a big help for that.
"Today was absolutely overwhelming."
Across both studs the Greenups run more than 5000 purebred Santa Gertrudis and breed about 3500 purebred females a year, of which more than 2500 are registered. Mr Greenup said they would continue to run both studs independently.
"The two different herds offer a lot of the same, to us it's about economies of scale and having a bigger genetic pool to play with," he said.
"It's one of the bigger Santa studs in Australia now. It's been a massive thing putting this together and Alice and I still have a long way to go with purchasing the properties.
"To get it all to happen, there's been a lot of pressure on at times. We've got people we need to honour who have backed us and to have a result today just says to us that we can roll on and do what we want to do."
