Some may say they’re sitting on a small fortune but their popularity as a niche market provider has not come without years of dedication for Mieke and Graham Fortune, Fortune Beef, Yandina.
Mr and Mrs Fortune not only own and operate the Fortune-8 plant nursery, they also breed Ultra Black and Wagyu beef cattle under the Fortune Beef stud banner.
In between supplying plant life to Bunnings Warehouse centres across Queensland the couple have sprout fed about 50 head of cattle on their 40 hectare property in the Sunshine Coast hinterland for the last 10 years.
As far as diversity in primary production goes, the Fortunes epitomise what it means to have an understanding of consumer tastes and Mrs Fortune said she enjoyed seeing her product through from start to finish.
“I get to see all aspects of the production chain. I focus on genetics and design what I want based on EBVs and high performance bloodlines and then get to see how my beef grades before eating it from the plate and marketing it accordingly,” she said.
Mrs Fortune said the stud herd originated from the Nindooinbah bull stud at Beaudesert and she had since kept all heifers as replacements to build numbers, with a percentage of bull calves on-sold for their breeding potential and the remaining steers finished on farm.
“Anything coloured goes back through our MSA meat program to be slaughtered at Nolan Meats, Gympie,” she said.
“Those cattle are finished via grain assistance in the paddock with the addition of the sprouts as a supplement. I find the sprouts add a point of difference to my beef product- it’s a niche thing.
“I still plant rye grass in winter and have a lot of green pick so it’s not an absolute necessity for drought proofing, but for me it’s about hand feeding the animals daily and contributing to the clean green movement.”
As the final link in the Fortune Beef supply chain, Mrs Fortune boxes the meat product to sell direct from her freezer to the consumer.
“We’re fortunate that we operate in an affluent area where a large percentage of people want to buy locally grown beef and they come straight to me on farm,” she said.
“They like seeing the ‘real thing’ in the paddock and knowing exactly what they’re paying for. The minimum purchase is 22kg or a carton of beef, which is about a tenth of an animal.
“I’m selling about an animal per fortnight and killing between 40 and 60 head annually. A big freezer under the building holds about seven animals and the beauty of that is you’ve got the capacity so you don’t have to kill one week and sell the following.”
With a keen eye on the end product and consumer satisfaction, Mrs Fortune said she aimed to breed an early maturing animal with adequate weight for age, marbling and one that was phenotypically soft.
“If cattle are tight they’ll eat hard, it’s as simple as that. The high Angus and Wagyu content not only delivers fertility but better carcase attributes trending towards marketability,” she said.
“We’re trying to achieve a 350kg to 400kg dressed weight at no more than 18 months of age because I believe it’s critical for quality meat production so I chase the best performance recorded genetics I can find.
“I like to think I wear a couple of different hats. While we are niche producers in the hinterland we see the bigger picture in the beef industry- having a consumer come back and ask for another box of meat just like their last and knowing it was your work from top to tail- that’s the icing on the cake.”
- Images by Kate Stark.