DURING a time when the beef industry is experiencing unprecedented high prices producers are keen to make their businesses even better.
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More than 100 producers from throughout southern NSW attended the Graham Centre’s annual Beef Forum at the Charles Sturt University (CSU) convention centre.
The event featured an array of speakers who shared information on animal health issues thorough to squeezing the best margins in cattle trading activities.
Speaker Andrew Nixon of “Merryvale”, Crookwell runs a 620 hectare property which incorporates 400 Angus breeding cows.
The operation turns off heavy-weight 15 to 16-month old feeder steers at 500 kilograms.
“You have to have a passion for what you do … and then you will really excel in what you do,” he said.
It was this drive which helped him to push the production system and make the most of available feed.
He described the operation as being “grass based” and cattle were used to “value add”.
Part of the solution in further pushing the feed advantage was in utilising silage.
The silage quality ranges from 12 to 18 per cent protein and some of the pastures were 40 years old and still “producing well”.
Given the continuous record breaking by the Eastern States Young Cattle Indicator many people were interested to hear about the margins and value of trading in the current market.
Holmes and Sackett director and consultant, John Francis of Wagga delivered his address titled Trading cattle – too costly to get in or too costly not to?
He spoke of the importance of using the spring feed curve to efficiently balance pasture production with nutrition requirements.
And the escalating cattle market attributed to the upward trend in some of his projection figures. And as a result the buy in price for traders had skyrocketed on the back of a climbing beef cattle market.
Despite the intricacies of cattle trading he joked that he had “never seen a cattle trade fail on paper.”
“I think the best is in front of us with beef cattle,” he said.
He said higher prices for cattle could lead to greater profits per head.
And he said the buy-in price may seem extreme and prices between buying and selling need to drop by a magnitude of greater than
