Five-year goal to be in top 10 per cent of two breeding indexes

And while RV Pastoral principals Victoria and Richard Moffatt were happy with that result, their goal within the next five years is to have their bulls listed in the top 10 per cent for those two indexes.

Mrs Moffatt said they worked on both indexes for their Brahmans as they did not want to funnel themselves into one type of client.

"Obviously, we're already doing that by just doing Brahmans, but we recognise that people have a multitude of different end goals for their business and markets," she said.

"And, we want to produce animals that are really well described so that if the buyer's focus is high production and profit, they can come and look at those animals, look at their data as well as physically look at them and say 'these figures are all telling me that what I need for my business is environmental suitability because I am in the north...and I want an animal that can produce progeny which can go on a boat every year'.

"They can then look at those figures and say 'this animal, this animal and this animal are all going to hit that mark and we will choose from them."

Mr Moffatt said a lot of their buyers ran cross breed programs where they were looking to inject Bos Indicus back into their herds.

He said this could be because some of their animals had become a bit soft and they needed to inject a bit of adaptability back into them or they wanted to buy an animal with high fertility or a high growth trait.

"And that's why we're more focused on the Brahman breed so people know that we've got a very good base they can come back to that's predictable," he said.

RV Pastoral is an 11,000 hectare aggregate of three properties - Muldoon, Mountain Hut and Green Gully - in the Morinish district, 80 km north west of Rockhampton. The three properties are 25 km apart and have about eight different land types ranging from Bloodwood and broad leaf forest country to softwood scrub country.

Mr Moffatt said they ran a predominately pure Brahman seedstock operation providing volume bulls into the north for corporate and large northern livestock production systems.

The couple also has a commercial herd and trading operation that is determined by the market and seasons.

The Moffatts moved to Muldoon in 2007 and from 2013 were in a joint venture with AA Co producing more than 2500 bulls over the course of the contract. When that ceased in 2021, they went out on their own, selling between 120 to 150 bulls a year where bulls are sold at 600 days.

Mr Moffatt said they had about 1500 weaned, growing and pregnant females in their seedstock herd.

"We don't call it a stud because they're produced on a large scale and the seedstock herd is run on a commercial basis with commercial values," he said.

"We put strict pressure on them so the people who buy off us know that the pressure that we're putting on our cattle means they can handle their commercial conditions."

Mr Moffatt said animals were selected on their temperament, ease of handling and fertility.

"They have to have high fertility - what we mean by that is that the bulls produce females that have a calf and go back in calf with a calf at foot every year," he said.

"They also have to have high growth traits so they can be fit for purpose from weaning and be marketed for live export or back into the feedlot chain - and are also fit for purpose for a grass bullock operation."

Mrs Moffatt said their point of difference was that their selection of animals was very much based on data where they take DNA from every calf in each year's cohort for genomic testing.

Mr Moffatt said they were also phenotypically measured according to Breedplan and if the data did not match up then the animal was sold to the meatworks.

He said the reason they had gone down that path of collecting data was for transparency so they could tell their clients that they were doing what they said they were doing with their breed objective.

Mr Moffatt said the females were put into their calving and joining groups just before they started to calve and during calving from August to December someone was in the paddock every day recording information on the cows and calves, and tagging new calves.

Mrs Moffatt said they used the Breedplan service, MateSel, to predict the estimated breeding values (EBVs) for the progeny of certain females with certain bulls.

"Or, they will tell you what bulls to put with what females so you can create the genetic gain in the herd that you want to create...then we very heavily balance that with the phenotypical attributes," Mr Moffatt said.

"In the phenotypical traits, we're looking for an animal that's fit for purpose that expresses growth attributes and carcase attributes...but you have to ground truth everything.

"There could be a multitude of things that would get an animal rejected - one could be temperament, two, its pizzle or, three, it could be structural concerns. In any breeding operation, to have a gain in one area, you sometimes might have to forgo something in another area, every breeder goes through that.

"But...we like predictable genetics as well - so if we're looking at an animal and his data is saying, for example, that his female fertility is high and that's what we're chasing, we'll seriously look at that bull - it's all about producing an animal that's fit for purpose and is well balanced across traits so they can go out and multiply in a production system where they are going to be profitable and have low inputs."

The Moffatts keep each year's cohort on property for 600 days to obtain the data they need for Breedplan.

While Mr Moffatt is a third generation primary producer who grew up on a mixed cattle operation at Millmerran, Mrs Moffatt comes from a mixed farming enterprise in Wiltshire, England.

Mr Moffatt said RV Pastoral, was, however, a first generation business and not traditional in its farming practices.

"So for us, we're not afraid to change our spots to be able to adapt and move with the market and climatic conditions," he said.

"Probably a lot of people struggle with the way we do a lot of things because there's no set way to do something, but we very much work on the premise of what we have - so, how much grass we have, what stock we have on hand and how we can make that work for us in the short, medium and long term."

Strong advocates of rotational grazing, the couple are also founding members of Frontier Genetics; are in negotiations to baseline their enterprise for carbon credits; and are looking at the use of natural capital in their business.

As to their production, the Brahman seedstock stay at Muldoon with all the weaners walked over the hill to the Green Gully block to grow out. Between eight and 10 months, the heifers are moved to Mountain Hut where, Mr Moffatt said, environmental pressures were put on the heifers to perform and go into calf.

All the heifers are kept as a full cohort for 400 days until they are drafted out based on their EBVs, temperament and phenotypical traits. About 10 per cent of the heifers are culled and go into the commercial herd where they are grown out and sold as feeder heifers or go to a feedlot for custom feeding.

About 150 culled bulls are kept and either sold for the live export market or go to the meatworks, whichever has the best price.

Yearling heifers and heifers are joined in mid November for 60 days while cows are joined at the same time, but for 90 days.

Mr Moffatt said they did not have a set program for the commercial herd as it was determined by market and seasonal conditions.

He said when the season "pulled very tight, very quickly" last year they kept a core number of bulls for clients and sold off the bulls that did not make the grade very early into the live export trade and meatworks.

"We outed them as we were worried about our feed and knew from our feed budgeting that we weren't going to have feed for all of them," he said.

Mrs Moffatt said they were very focused on their grass through rotational grazing and were constantly updating their grass budget.

"We probably love our grass more than our cows sometimes so as soon as we see our grass budget is saying there is going to be an issue in x amount of time, we react and make a decision rather than being forced to make a decision later on," she said.

Mr Moffatt said the path they were taking in their business was because they lived in a land of environmental extremes.

"You have to adapt a business model so you can survive those extremes," he said.

Mr Moffatt will give a presentation and have RV Pastoral bulls on show at Sir Graham McCamley's property, Bondoola Meadows, near Yeppoon, on Monday, May 6, as part of Beef 2024's Property Tour program.