Potential New Farm

3 posts
Mon, 03/12/2012 - 12:33 #1

Member for

12 years 9 months
alliejack
Last seen: 03/12/2012 - 12:33
Joined: 03/12/2012 - 12:26

Potential New Farm

Hi All

My husband & I have been looking into buying 100 acres for a while to run a few head of cattle on it.  We inspected a property over the weekend but is a little bigger than we planned, its 1600 acres.

The property its self is great, it is in the central west at 1100mts alitude, and the current owner has been running Wagyu cattle on it for years, the pastures are in great condition and there is an abundance of water.  The stock & station agent said we could run on it 400 head of cattle without a problem & that was factoring in the area that is timbered.

My question is, what cattle breed should we look at to run on this propety, we were thinking Wagyu but I understand that they have a longer feeding period to get the better prices on. We are looking for something we can do some short term (2-3 years) trading on to pay the mortgage & then maybe progress into a different breed that has a higher yield, and can we run two different breeds of cattle on the one property?

Sorry if this sounds dumb, but we really like the property & would like to develop a business plan for the bank & I would like to consider our options.

Cheers,

Sarah

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Wed, 03/14/2012 - 09:34 #2
charlie
Last seen: 12/26/2018 - 09:21
Joined: 05/31/2011 - 09:44

Hi Sarah,

Welcome to the Farmstyle forum, sounds like you have some exciting times ahead. In answering your question, there are in excess of fifty cattle breeds (tropical, british and european) in Australia and which one you choose will depend on:

  • Climate,
  • land type,
  • nutrition (improved or native pasture, access to supplementary feeding),
  • target market (export, supermarket, butcher),
  • desire for hybrid vigour/crossbreeding,
  • stocking policy (breeding, trading or a mix of both).

When you answer some of these questions you will have a better idea of the cattle breed that will best suit your goals. Click here for more information on choosing a cattle breed.

Wagyu's are a specialist breed that came to Australia from Japan. Wagyu cattle require 300-550 days in a feedlot to achieve the flavoursome, marbled meat that they are famous for. Feeding these animals is expense, however high quality, well marbled meat is also highly valuable. For more information on Wagyu cattle click here.

If you want to undertake something short term, cattle trading may be an option. This is more labour intensive (drenching, vaccinating, weighing, loading and unloading, marketing) than breeding and will require more time and labour. Will you be farming full time?

You may also be interested in one of our consulting packages. It can be well worthwhile to have someone independent either look over the farm before purchase or to help formulate a business strategy.

I trust you find this information of assistance. No doubt you will have some questions, which you can post here.

Charlie 

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Fri, 03/30/2012 - 15:52 #3
dreamingcityboy
Last seen: 03/08/2018 - 21:05
Joined: 03/23/2012 - 16:08

One issue you might run into is bank finance. You'll likely need a 50% deposit to buy a property that big. I was shocked when I found out I could (according to the bank) "afford" a city property but could not "afford" a country property 4000x larger and half the price!

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