The EU accredited Mt Elsa in the Yaamba district situated north of Rockhampton is home to Steven and Claire Farmer along with their three children Hugh, Hamish and Lara.
Mt Elsa consists of 3885 hectares of highly productive sandy loam river country, pondage pastures, irrigation forest country, and enjoys an eight kilometre frontage of the Fitzroy River.
It was originally part of the Lake Learmonth aggregation which has a long history in the northern beef industry with previous international owners such as Lord Vestey’s, Western Grazing and Greek shipping magnate Gregory Hadjeleftheriadis’s Alice Springs Pastoral Company.
Present custodian Steve Farmer said ‘in days gone by it was renowned as a bullock paddock’ with finished cattle being walked to Lakes Creek meat works in Rockhampton.
But these days Mt Elsa is EU accredited and consists of 250 stud Droughtmaster females registered under the SC prefix and has a commercial Droughtmaster herd comprised of 400 cows that are joined to Wagyu bulls for F1 production.
“Cows are multi-sire mated and rotationally grazed between three paddocks,” Mr Farmer said.
“Data recording and the use of Breedplan is a big part of the SC Droughtmaster focus with all progeny DNA fingerprinted for maternal and paternal parentage,” Steven said.
The Farmers are certainly not afraid of change and have been, and will continue to be involved in numerous research projects.
They have successfully completed several of the Grazing BMP workshops, as well as Breeding Edge, Nutrition and Grazing Land Management.
In addition, the Farmers were involved in the Smart Futures Fund Next Gen Beef Breeding Strategies Project, the Northern Genomics Project, and supplied bulls for the MLA-funded Repronomics and MDC-funded Northern BIN projects.
Speakers on the day include Ben Hayes, from the University of Queensland, who will be discussing optimising genetics through objective selection and genomics.
Ross Newman will be providing key information on the value of irrigated pastures and the benefits of Wagyu production, including the use of breeding and backgrounding first-cross Wagyu cattle through innovation and technology transfer.
The Mt Elsa property will be particularly appealing to anyone interested in northern beef production.
The full day tour is on Monday, May 7 at a cost $140 which includes morning tea and lunch.