It’s taken a while – a touch over a year after we bought the property, but we are now the proud owners of 14 cows (pregnant cows at that)!

Unfortunately I don’t have any very good photos of them yet, but here’s some rather average ones:

Here are closer photos from Grant. You can see their quality and good condition better in these.

My father has a cousin, Craig, who runs lots of head up at Proston to the north of us. He buys his bulls from a guy called Grant, owner of Bonnie Doone property. A large cattle farm with a regenerative agriculture approach (and are certified organic) running primarily mid frame sized Brangus Senepol crosses.

I figured I may as well start my herd with known good genetic stock, rather than take my chances at the sale yards buying unknowns. Several weeks ago I got in touch with Grant about potentially buying some heifers. None available, but it has been extremely dry up there, so he was needing to offload some head and offered me pregnant cows in calf and sent a few photos.

Last Thursday Daniel and I did a big trip up to the Monto area (1100km for the day!) to visit Grant and look at the cows. We like them, and agreed to purchase 14 of the group he had gathered in the yards. Was great to meet Grant, and he showed us around some of the property – the cattle themselves, Leucaena rows in many of the pastures, fencing and watering systems (he uses electric fencing and rotationally grazes), timber mill, and some freshly cooked banana cake before our return trip!

He delivered the cattle himself the following day. It was school holidays, so Daniel and Jonathan got there Friday morning for the delivery (I was stuck at work unfortunately) and took the following video:

Exciting times as the cows are getting used to us and to the property, and us to them. They’ll be calving around January/February too! This now puts some pressure on to better sort out fencing and water. Not that more fencing is a requirement for them to have food and water; it just lets us better rotationally graze them over the whole farm in a controlled manner for better pasture management.