Raff family has no regrets about move from Drillham to King Island

The dramatic switch from Drillham on the western edge of Queensland's Western Downs to a Tasmanian island in Bass Strait, together with 500 of their Angus seedstock, has been well documented but the question needs to be asked - was it worthwhile?

Andrew Raff, standing knee-deep in a paddock of ryegrass, cocksfoot and white clover, a paddock of first calving heifers gathered on the electric fenceline behind him, expecting to be moved to another lush pasture, doesn't hesitate with his answer.

"At a production level, while we've seen land values increase here, it's still cheap," he said.

"It sounds expensive per acre but if you work out what you can carry, and the security, and the emotional value, I think now...if people can spend an extra $500 an acre to get somewhere where they don't have that emotional stress of just managing drought, the what ifs - it's worth it.

"I don't think I'd be selling bulls - the first three, four years of us moving, it was shocking drought (in Queensland), we would have been probably broke and mentally screwed up.

"Here, you don't have that. The budgeting is literally fertiliser, animal health and freight, and you could put hay away, as much or as little as you want."

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While in Queensland they shut their best country for oats up for eight months of a year and relied on rainfall in a three-week planting window, it's a completely different story on King Island.

"There's so much rainfall, so much higher production, so much more security," Mr Raff continues. "You have a such a better lifestyle. It made the decision easy."

Although farming had taken place on the island since 1888, it was soldier settler schemes after each World War that saw the landscape opened up for sheep, beef and dairy cattle.

The 1050 ha that the Raffs own is an amalgamation of small soldier settler titles, a lot of it previously used for dairying, which was so run down that they could pull everything up and start again.

At the moment they're dividing a 160ha block into 25 paddocks for their rotational grazing program, which a lucky Queensland fencing contractor has the job of doing.

Belts of radiata pine and macrocarpa trees are being taken out because of their age, and the Raffs expect to replant with 1000 native melaleuca trees a year.

They expect that will make them carbon positive, yet another area they are exploring.

The move to King Island's reliable weather and abundant grass made organic certification an obvious choice. As well as agreeing with their principles, the grassfed, organic, family owned, King Island story is one that's hard to go past, and gives them a point of difference.

They've found natural alternatives to help replace the copper, cobalt, selenium and manganese that the country is low in, delivered through stomach boluses, and, thanks to organic production being well-established, have a number of options for organic superphosphate to choose from.

"We applied liquid fertiliser in the autumn last year and then a granular fertiliser - we've just finished now, 220 kilos to the hectare, plus lime sand, which we put down at a rate of five to seven tonne to the hectare," Mr Raff said.

Luckily the island is an exporter of lime sand, which is used to bring soil pH up.

One of the biggest changes for the family has been having trade steers for sale.

Mr Raff said 94 per cent of the bull calves weaned as part of their Queensland operation were sold as breeding bulls, whereas on King Island, when they hit full production, they expect that to decrease to 40 per cent.

The other 60 per cent will become steers and be fattened on-farm before being consigned by boat to Greenham's registered processing plant for organic cattle at Smithton.

"Then we get the carcase feedback," Mr Raff said.

"The majority of studs, they don't have the opportunity because they're specialising in stud and they haven't got the scope, so they can't get carcase feedback.

"That was part of the move, to get actual carcases hanging on the hooks so we can prove what we're up to."

It means they're gauging performance from dollars per head hanging on a kill rail.

Mr Raff said it was a hugely invaluable tool.

"It's great to have because everyone's getting a lot smarter, there's more emphasis on EBVs and probably less integrity put on the producer by what he says," he said. "They're falling back on science so we have our carcase data."

While it's not carcase data, Mr Raff points to 283 autumn calving cows that are averaging 775 kilos liveweight.

"Our cow size hasn't increased but they're obviously heavier because of the environment," he said.

Although The Raff's cattle are being run in small mobs, each paddock is identical and the cattle are eating the same feed, so the performance variance data can be analysed as one contemporary mob.

As far as calving goes, the Raffs are going against the advice of consultants, that autumn calving in the island's environment was far less profitable than spring calving.

Thanks to the wet weather that turns paddocks in the middle of the island into bogs, most people have coastal country as well, but cattle are hard to finish there.

"Most of the island calves in spring but we do it in autumn - it simply suits our management," Mr Raff said. "Yes, we've got to spread them out more over winter but it suits our bull side of things, it suits the calves being on their mothers for that first winter, and it suits calving in February-March instead of in the rain in September-October."

They've done it successfully for a few years now, finding benefits in calves being on their mothers for their first winter, and being over any risk period by the second winter, when they're 18 months old.

It's been a delicate balancing act but one that seems to fit both with bull sale dates and the island's temperament.

Getting bulls to Queensland begins four months before the annual sale and involves loading them onto truck trailers, which are driven onto a boat for a sea voyage to the mainland, where they're backloaded onto B doubles for some R&R at Finley in the NSW Riverina district before another road trip up to Queensland.

"They do all their pre-sale prep up there, where 18-month-old bulls have been working a treat," Mr Raff said.

Along with free range chickens that they hope to incorporate into the cattle rotations, the family is doing up two of the six houses they inherited, so they can offer guided farm tours.

"We want to offer farm tours because its amazing, the island's amazing to showcase, and because of the whole education thing - there continues to be a perception about cattle and killing the world," Mr Raff said. "If we can just get more people on ground to show them what we're doing and others are doing, it's all good for education."

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