The Glover family have seen strong demand for their purebred and crossbred Red Brangus article since they introduced the breed into their operation in 2005.
For the last 12 months, Greg Glover and his son Jason have run the business as a partnership over the family's two properties in Tambo: Prospect and Cranmore.
Prospect was drawn by Greg's father Jack Glover in 1946 and the family bought Cranmore 15 years ago. Prospect, predominantly consists of open downs with a bit of timber, while Cranmore is on heavily timbered country with small stands of open downs.
Jason Glover said there were several traits that attracted them to the Red Brangus.
"Their Angus content with a bit of Bos Indicus is well suited to our country, they perform well in our conditions compared to some other breeds. They also have a good temperament and another big draw is their poll genetics," Mr Glover said.
"We use purebred Red Brangus females as much as possible to keep the breeds traits in our herd, though in addition to joining them with Red Brangus bulls we also cross them with Herefords, and for the last two years we've been putting Speckle Park bulls over them to get more Angus content in the progeny," he said.
While their bulls are in the paddock with the cows on a year-round basis, they do utilise a fixed joining period for the heifers, which spans three months, usually from October or November depending on the season.
"The heifers are preg-tested at five months and are culled if they aren't in-calf. With the cows we go more on the eye-test to decide which are kept on, and dry's are also culled. Our fertility rate is usually between 85 to 90 per cent. If we reach 90pc in a year we're pretty happy."
They sell steers at 14 to 18 months old and 350kg to 420kg to the feedlot market, usually through AuctionsPlus as they find it provides them with a bit more control over the price. Cull cows are sold through the Blackall Saleyards.
"We sold steers earlier in the year for $4/kg to $4.50/kg, and we just sold some cull cows averaging 500kg to 520kg which returned $1530/head."
Mr Glover said they've been buying bulls from the Classic Red Brangus Sale since it began and with the sale vendors instead offering their drafts at the ABCA Rockhampton Brangus Sale this year it will be the first sale they'll miss.
"There has always been a high quality selection of good doing bulls, with great temperaments, from harder country, at the sale."
To benchmark the article they're producing, the Glovers entered six steers (three pure Red Brangus and three Red Brangus cross) in the Westech Steer Trial this year.
"The steers were run under uniform conditions, on oats for 14 weeks at Thistlebank in Barcaldine, and then sent to the Mort & Co Grassdale Feedlot for a 100-day feeding program prior to slaughter.
"We mainly want to see if the cross or the purebred Red Brangus article is performing better to work out which direction to take with the herd going forward. There is a luncheon being held soon where we'll find out the results.
"We do get repeat buyers for our steers at present though, so I think we're on the right track."
Mr Glover said they received 457mm of rain last year, and that they were lucky enough that it fell at times when it could do some good.
"We had more rain at the start of this year just when the cattle were starting to go back. The 2020 season to date has been one of the better ones we've had. So far we've received 381mm and we're just coming into the wetter part of the year now," he said.
"For the first time since 2010 we even had the luxury of planting a crop last summer. We've since baled this forage hay and are using it to feed our cattle."