Peter and Sharon Seawright have been receiving great returns across a variety of markets for the pure and crossbred Santa Gertrudis progeny they produce.
With assistance from their son Jarrod, his wife Catie, and daughters Bree and Maddie, Peter and Sharon run their pure Santa herd, with their softer bulls, on Injune properties Comet Downs and Doo-Mei, while their more muscular, earlier weight gaining bulls are joined with Charolais, Braford and a few Brangus breeders on Yarrabin, 50km north of Roma.
It was in 2011 that the Seawrights bought their first Santa Gertrudis females from Sharons' parents Rod and Nancy Cloherty who also run a purebred Santa Gertrudis commercial operation and utilise a lot of bulls sourced from the Moongana Bull Sale hosted by Cyril and Denise Gauld.
"We've also been buying bulls and females from Moongana since 2011," Mr Seawright said.
"Cyril is always happy for us to call in and take a look at his cattle. They're a pleasure to deal with," he said.
"The Moongana cattle are a really good type, they produce large-framed cows and bulls that grow out really easily. Their cattle are also very quiet, there isn't much stir in them at all, and this is showing in the progeny. It's also very comforting as we constantly have our young nieces and nephews coming over to visit us."
Mrs Seawright said the genetics sourced from Moongana helped them establish their, Jazmaree Santa Gertrudis stud, this year.
"We bought Registered S cattle from Cyril and other studs for this purpose. Our main aim with the stud at present is to upgrade our female herd, it'll likely be another two or three years before we start selling paddock bulls. We also want to get better Santa blood through our crossbred herd on Yarribin to get earlier weight gains in the weaners," she said.
They said they like Santa Gertrudis for their lovely temperament, softness, fertility, ease of calving, weight qain ability, and their ability to put on muscle early.
"The cows provide a good supply of milk as well. The calves will put on weight even in our harder country."
Mrs Seawright said they sell 300 to 350kg weaners through the Roma Store Sale, though if they do get to 350kg they also target the feedlotter and backgrounder markets.
"We also sold some purebred 18 to 22 month-old Santa PTIC heifers, some of which would have contained Moongana genetics, through AuctionsPlus to a buyer in Miles. They returned 463c/kg at an average of 461kg. Needless to say we were very happy with that result."
Mr Seawright said while the bulls are currently in the paddock year-round, they're moving to a fixed joining period in the near future to achieve improved consistency in their lines.
"The seasons we've had for the last five years have made it difficult to make this change though. Despite this we still have a good success rate in calving as we do a lot of assessment.
"A mob of 94 replacement heifers we preg-tested this year came back at 90 per cent in-calf, and are cows are always hitting 90pc or better. In the purebred Santa herd we generally run 35 to 40 cows with a single sire and Sharon records all the data on the calves produced."
Mrs Seawright said while they're still expanding their herd, their eventual aim is to phase out the crossbred program and go to a 100pc Santa Gertrudis herd.
"We're still years from realising that though. The process will involve taking over my parents herd through a succession plan in coordination with my brother, Brian."
Mr Seawright said to diversify their business interests the family purchased Gregory Fabrications in 2006 and under their umbrella company Breckon Cattle Equipment in 2016.
"From our Clermont-based premises we build cattle crushes, cradles and other cattle handling equipment predominantly for clients in the Central Queensland region. We also service the mining and rural sector in CQ as we have many years of knowledge and experience in oil and gas field construction, gas extraction and drilling services."
Mrs Seawright said the country on their Injune blocks consists of brigalow, box and bottle tree scrub, and Yarrabin mainly features light loamy sand soils. All three properties received an average of 270mm of rain between January and February this year, and another 65mm has fallen since then.
"It has been a big improvement on last year. We should get close to reaching our annual rainfall average of 630mm. We have a good body of grass from the early rain, so we're just starting to put lick out now. On the lighter country a green tinge is starting to come back so if we get further rain we'll certainly grow a bit of buffel."