CHOOSING the winning pens from an impressive line-up of 1200 head in the Ruralco Commercial Cattle Championships was a giant task for judges Kurt Wockner, Oakey Beef Exports, and Beau Surawski, Allied Beef.
Blackwater beef producers Ken and Kerry McKenzie, Yaralla, took home their fourth Beef Australia grand champion pen trophy, with a pen of 10 Droughtmaster steers.
The pen of milk tooth steers, also won the champion grainfed title and had an average weight of 546kg. They had come off 128 days on feed at the Donovan family’s Duaringa Station feedlot and went on to sell for $1800 per head.
Other major winners included Mac and Gayle Shann, Cantaur Park, Clermont, who won champion grainfed heifers with their pen of Droughtmaster/Charolais-cross heifers that sold for $1488/head.
Mac and Gayle Shann, Cantaur Park, Clermont, with their pen of champion grainfed heifers.
Yandaburra Pastoral Company, owned by veteran beef producer Eric Nobbs, and his sons Chas, Roger, and Stewart, took home the ribbon for the champion crop or pasturefed steers for their Charbray steers.
Chas Nobbs and son Phillip, of Nobbs Grazing, Cordelia, Moura, won the champion crop of pasturefed heifers title for a pen of Charbray heifers. The pen of 10 Charbrays averaged 713.5kg and went on to sell for an average of $1750/head to JBS Australia, Dinmore.
Chas and Phillip Nobbs, Nobbs Grazing, Cordelia, Moura, with their champion pen of crop or pasturefed heifers.
Helen Walker
Journalist for Queensland Country Life at Rockhampton.
Journalist for Queensland Country Life at Rockhampton.
