Taroom Charbray focus pays off

Many may never fully recover, but some, like Taroom beef producer Matt Welsh, believe those drought years have ultimately made his family's beef business more viable.

It was during the drought of the mid to late 1990s that the Welsh family came to realise the full potential of their Charbray breeders.

The family had started breeding Charolais bulls in the early 1980s to use as terminal sires over Brahman cows but began keeping their Charbray heifers after encountering difficulties sourcing quality replacement females.

As the drought set in, the Charbray cows began to outperform the purebred Brahman and Charolais females, as well as the first-cross cows, producing more calves and requiring less inputs to get those calves to weaning.

"The Charbray cows literally forced their way into our paddocks," Mr Welsh said.

"They were the cows having calves every year - despite the drought - and, at the end of the day, calves on the ground is the main profit driver of any breeder operation.

"It might have been hard to live through, but that drought definitely made our breeder herd more accountable.

"It opened our eyes to the potential of the Charbray breed and that revelation has been instrumental in making our entire operation more profitable."

Confirmation of the benefits of breeding Charbray cattle has meant a subtle shift in focus for the Welsh family business, the Huntington Charolais and Charbray Stud.

Although the origin of the Huntington Stud lay in breeding Charolais bulls, Matt says the performance of their own herd has meant a growing focus on Charbray genetics.

The family business owns several breeding and fattening properties in the Taroom district and runs around 1000 commercial and stud cows.

Working alongside Matt are his wife Rachael, brother, John, parents Pat and Laurie, and brother and sister-in-law, Luke and Keryn.

The Huntington Stud sells bulls at an annual spring bull sale in Taroom and an autumn sale at Winton.

Bulls are also available privately out of the paddock.

Any surplus commercial steers are sold as feeders into a network of local grass finishers while most surplus heifers are sold to repeat buyers as replacement breeding stock or as feeder heifers to backgrounders for the feedlot sector.

In their own herd, the use of Charbray bulls over Charbray females has delivered consistency and predictability.

Matt said there was a common perception among producers that Charbrays were just a mixture of Charolais and Brahman blood - that anyone with one of each parent breed could easily produce a Charbray.

But it is a misconception that he is keen to dispel.

"There are so many people that think they can't breed past their first cross," he said.

"Our experience has overwhelmingly been that by stabilising our Charbray herd, we could move away from the trait variation that using the two parent breeds gave us, which in turn delivered increased progeny predictability.

"There will always be a top line of animals you really love in your first cross but you can also get a fair tail in the same drop of calves.

"We've found it's far more profitable to reduce the tail in our herd through better predictability by using good quality Charbray bulls."

Despite being a stud operation, Matt says it is business as usual on their breeding properties.

The cows are generally joined from November through to March or April and the entire herd is pregnancy tested annually. Mr Welsh said there was generally a five per cent drop from pregnancy rate to weaning rate, which was currently hovering around 87pc.

"The fact that our Charbray cows have superior fertility is so clearly highlighted at weaning time," Mr Welsh said.

"They have just overtaken the herd. Through sheer performance the Charbray cows have commanded the majority of our breeder space."

Matt said the family had been able to reduce their supplementary feeding bill in recent years and attributes that to the performance of the Charbray breeders.

"With a realistic stocking rate and a larger number of Charbray cows in the herd we've seen a notable decline in our supplementary feeding costs but better performance in the cows at the same time," he said.

"We do think it's very beneficial to look after the weaners well and we also yard, wean and handle them regularly throughout that process."

Now in his third year as president of the Charbray Society, Matt has been amazed at the speed with which Charbray cattle have come to the fore in his own business. He said being able to see results in his own herd had galvanized his passion for the breed.

"It's been an interesting process and we've learned a lot of lessons along the way, but the sheer demand for Charbray cattle and the potential that we see in our own herd has really driven the breeding program at Huntington," he said.