On about 1000 hectares, adjacent to the Bunya Mountains National Park, the Lawless family are carving themselves a niche in the beef industry with their paddock to plate Shorthorn operation.
Will and Jodie Lawless bought the property eight years ago but it's only been in the last year that they have honed in on the paddock to plate market, having previously focused on private sales of weaners.
They run about 100 head of breeders but have lightened off numbers because of the drought. There's typically 20 to 50 weaners on the property at a time, with weaning going on all year round to ensure a continuous age of cattle coming through the operation.
Once the cattle reach a target weight, barley is introduced to their diet with about 15 cattle on fodder at a time.
Mr Lawless, a fifth-generation producer and qualified diesel fitter, said the origin and the traceability of the product was very important to their customers.
"There's probably even more interest in that than the eatability," he said.
"People are really interested and they want to know that it's been treated well, been processed humanely and delivered to them as quickly and with the shortest amount of travel time as possible."
The cattle are processed at a small, family-owned abattoir at Jimbour before going to Oakey to be butchered and packaged in cryovac at Hamlyn's Modern Meats.
Among the products on offer are gourmet sausages, with a Bunya nut flavour currently in development, a nod to their location and to Mrs Lawless' grandfather's history as a national park ranger.
From there the Lawless family make delivery runs to various regions using a FoodSafe accredited, refrigerated truck.
Mr Lawless said they had chosen Shorthorns for their temperament, because it was important that children Jessica, 14, Eliza, 13, Billy, 9, and Henry, 2, could all be involved in the business.
"We love our Shorthorns, they're easy to work with, they're good mothers," he said.
"They're just a really good breed of cattle because of their adaptability and the way that they do have that really good carcase that this fodder helps with.
"They're really efficient at turning the feed into their carcase, they marble well and they finish quickly, which is what we want them to do."
Mrs Lawless said they found it fulfilling delivering their products to consumers and sharing their story.
"Since we have started, our demand has exceeded what we can supply," she said.
"We find that our customer base just continues to grow.
"I'd say 96 per cent of our customers are return buyers."
Hydroponic barley gives sweet results
For Will and Jodie Lawless, their hydroponic fodder solutions unit is a vital part of their beef business.
It's a five-day cyle to take the barley from seed to the point when it can be cut and fed to the cattle, with half a tonne of sprouts produced each day.
"We put in around 100kg of barley seed and it grows over that five days into half a tonne of feed so you get five times what you're putting in as a finished product," Mr Lawless said.
"I spent nearly 12 months researching it and doing figures, trying to figure out if it was going to work for us and trying to source the grain."
Mr Lawless said the bulk of the feed came from the grass in the paddock, but once the cattle reach 300kg they add fodder to their diet.
"We think it adds a different flavour to the meat, almost a sweet flavour," he said.
"It's quite high in protein. Your normal grass might be six per cent protein but this will raise what they're eating up to about 18 to 20 per cent protein.
"It also is high in phosphorus and magnesium and sulphur… it helps give that nutrition to the cattle as well."
