Annandale Acres Droughtmasters achieves $15,200 average at February All Breeds sale

The couple and their son, Clayton, Annandale stud, Calliope, sold four bulls at the sale to average $15,250 and following strong interest, sold another three paddock bulls on their return hone.

"We're extremely humbled with the sale result, especially considering we're our only first generation farmers and still very new to this industry," Mr Collins said.

"For one of our bulls to top the Droughtmasters category, and for two of our bulls to be purchased by stud owners, it gives us great confidence that we're doing the right thing."

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Annandale was only established in 2016 on Castletower bloodlines and now boasts more than 60 breeders.

"We've established our stud six years ago and we've been to one national sale with one bull and that was three years ago. Other than that, we've just been selling our bulls out of the paddock," he said.

"This was the first draft that we thought the quality was high and that's what we were aiming for to put through the sale ring.

"This draft of bulls came out of our stud herd when we only had 35 head. For a small stud herd, everyone was saying we're punching the quality out, from just 35 cows.

"They were bred local here in Calliope from Castletower bloodlines. Castletower said they 'we're looking to getting out of the stud and if you use you guys want to get into it, we'll sell a few pens of registered females'. We couldn't pass up that offer.

"We were commercial breeders but the last four years have been pretty dry here at Calliope, so we sold up our commercial breeders and just focused on our stud to keep them through."

Admittedly, John said he was nervous heading into the sale, unsure how his bulls would perform.

"I couldn't sleep the night before the sale," he said.

"We thought our bulls would attract the top end commercial buyers, but for two of them to go out to stud duties, that really made us happy.

"I would have loved to have kept that top price bull, but because our genetics are all so close, we can actually keep the bulls that we breed."

The Collins received a lot of interest in their bulls, so much that they sold another three paddock bulls after the sale.

"The amount of phone calls we had the next three or four days after of people chasing bulls was phenomenal," Mr Collins said.

"We actually had a few paddock bulls at home and we ended up selling the rest of them too.

"Including those three bulls out of the paddock that we sold, it brought our average down to $13,000, which is still very good.

"We've got about 40 replacement heifers coming through and we are after a new bull, but that'll probably be in September at the National sale.

"We've got one bull going to the National Droughtmaster sale later this year, and he's of the same quality of the bull that topped Droughtmaster category."

An increased number of commercial buyers registered their attendance at the February All Breeds sale in Gracemere last week.

Bulls remained affordable across the board, with commercial buyers taking advantage of the diverse bloodlines and large quantity of bulls on offer.

In attendance at last week's sale was grazier Greg Ehrlich of Greenfields Grazing, who runs a Charbray cross breeding operation across 7000 acres at Wandoan.

Mr Enrlich was on the look out for a quality Brangus bull to cross with his Charbray breeders.

He ended up purchasing two Brangus bulls for an average of $5000 each.

"We were looking for a younger bull to put over our maiden heifers coming on, because we don't like putting big bulls over little heifers," he said.

"We purchased a great Brangus sire, and we also took home another affordable sire, which we thought will do well in our operation."

Greenfields Grazing has changed their beef operation due to rising trends in the restocker market.

"We've changed our operation a little bit. It used to be a fattening operation, but with the price of feeder steers, it really got to the point where we thought we'd change our plan," he said.

"We decided to go into a breeding operation over in the Wandoan country.

"Buying feeder steers at the moment is still very dear, but the sale side is still very desirable and rewarding."

Geoff Shaw, Bayfield Cattle Company, Alton Downs, just sold his Biloela property, and was on the look out for a Brangus bull to go with his remaining breeder herd.

Mr Shaw purchased the $18,000 equal top selling Brangus bull.

"We just sold all the breeders at the Biloela block and I kept around 60 Brangus cows and heifers. We sold eight decks of breeders though Gracemere and we got some pretty good prices," Mr Shaw said.

"I bought a Brangus bull last week to go with them at Alton Downs.

"We've had the Alton Downs property for over five years now and we used to travel back and forth to Biloela.

"I'm starting to slow down a little bit and I'm going to breed a few steers and heifers."

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