Local graziers attended an informative workshop at Warrawee Station to learn how to achieve optimum reproductive performance for their breeder herds.
This two-day workshop focused on the theory and practical skills of pregnancy testing and foetal ageing in cattle, and how to integrate skills and information to make decisions about livestock efficiency and performance.
Eiren Smith, Dreghorn Station, said pregnancy testing was a valuable management tool to monitor reproductive efficiency and detect problems early in the breeding season.
He said discussions about pregnancy rates, patterns of conception during a mating period, and what that data meant for future planning and management, was helpful.
Eiren also said the course focused on how to optimise pasture use to maximise the kilograms turned off per hectare while maintaining the resource base.
“The productivity of our business is reliant on the number of weaners we can turn off per year and not the number of cows we run,” he explained.
“Running less cows for the same amount of weaners means less input costs, better land condition and better profitability.”
North Queensland Dry Tropics Senior Grazing Field Officer, Chris Poole, said a challenge for the northern beef industry was to find ways to expand output and improve the quality of livestock despite the constraints imposed by a highly variable climate.
“While graziers can’t change rainfall or land type, they can manage coverage of P3 (perennial, palatable, productive) pastures in their country and increase water use efficiency and pasture production,” Chris said.
The workshop was supported by The Herding Change Through Grassroots Recovery project, funded by the partnership between the Australian Government’s Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. The project aims to strengthen graziers' capacity to increase perennial groundcover at the end of the dry season, and reduce run-off of fine sediment to the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.
Photos supplied
Presenter Ian Braithwaite is flanked by Dreghorn graziers Eiren and Tegan Smith
Merricourt cattleman Jacob Gallagher and Warrawee grazier Kellie Healing preg-testing a cow
Ian Braithwaite uses a cow's pelvic bone to explain the physiology
Photos supplied
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