Cattle production: matching the animal, country and market

Australian beef is sold into a wide range of markets, from the domestic supermarket trade to high-value export programs, and the industry's size and reach are often cited as reasons for confidence. A cattle enterprise does not run on industry confidence. It runs on the fit between three things: the animal it produces, the country that feeds it and the market it sells into. When those three fit, the business works in most seasons. When they do not, no amount of favourable headlines will make it work. This article is about the fit.

Start with the intended market

The cattle a business produces need to suit the requirements of the next buyer or production stage. Those requirements are specific: a weight range, a fat cover, an age limit expressed through dentition, a breed type, sometimes a program accreditation or a feeding history. A feedlot buying feeder cattle wants a particular entry weight and age. A processor buying for the domestic trade wants a different weight and finish from one buying for export. A branded program, Wagyu or otherwise, has its own specifications. A backgrounder buying weaners wants them in a condition to grow.

Each of those requirements influences breeding, growth targets, management and sale timing. The producer who knows the specification before the calves are born can breed and grow towards it. The one who grows cattle and then looks for a buyer takes whatever the market offers for cattle that fit nothing in particular. Marketing, in this sense, happens at joining, not at the saleyard.

Match the system to the feed available

The second fit is between the cattle and the country. A property needs a realistic assessment of the feed it can provide across seasons: how much, of what quality, and how reliably. On that assessment rests the choice of enterprise. Breeding, which carries cows year-round and asks the most of the feed base in late winter and early lactation. Backgrounding, which grows young cattle on quality feed and can be scaled to the season. Finishing on grass, which needs sustained quality to put the last weight and fat on. Trading, which buys and sells to use a seasonal surplus.

Nutrition decisions then follow from the enterprise and the feed. They should account for cattle requirements by class and stage, the pasture condition and its quality through the year, the alternatives when pasture falls short, and the cost of each. The common failure is a system that works in a good season and collapses in an ordinary one, because it was designed around the feed the property grows in its best years.

Match the animal to both

The third fit is the animal itself: breed, frame, adaptation and genetics suited to the country and the market. A large-framed, high-growth animal that needs abundant feed to perform will underperform on hard native pasture and may not finish without grain. A moderate, adapted animal may finish on grass but miss the weight a particular market wants. Cattle bred in a cool, soft environment struggle in a hot, hard one; cattle from tick-free country have no resistance in tick country. The genetics that produce marbling for a premium program are a different selection from the genetics that produce fertility and survival in a breeding herd on rough country, and a business pursuing both has to decide where its priorities lie.

The breeding articles in this series cover selection in detail. The principle is that the animal is chosen to fit the pathway, not the other way around.

Manage the pathway

Animal health, handling and records support the production plan at every stage, and growth alone is not the whole result. Cattle need to reach an appropriate stage and specification within a system the business can sustain, which means health programs that prevent the setbacks, parasite control that is targeted rather than routine, handling that does not cost growth through stress, and weighing that shows whether the plan is on track long before the sale does.

The records are the pathway made visible. Weaning weights, growth rates by mob and season, pregnancy results, treatment histories and carcase feedback, recorded against the individual animal, show which cattle fit the country and the market and which do not. Over years that record is the basis of the breeding and buying decisions that improve the fit.

Understand the claims

Australian cattle production includes different breeds, feeding systems and market pathways, and generalisations about Australian beef are usually wrong for some part of it. Claims such as grass-fed or hormone-free need to be supported for the specific cattle and supply chain, and they should not be assumed to describe all Australian beef. Hormonal growth promotants, for example, are regulated products used in some Australian production systems and not in others, and some markets and programs exclude them. A producer selling into a program that makes a claim has to be able to document that the cattle meet it, through the records and declarations the traceability system provides.

The same applies to claims producers make about their own cattle. A claim that cannot be supported from the records is a liability, not a marketing advantage.

Seasons and the limits of the plan

Every production pathway runs through seasons that will not cooperate. The plan has to include what happens when feed falls short: which cattle are sold first, which are fed, which are protected as the core of the business. A breeding herd sized to the carrying capacity of an ordinary year, with trade cattle or backgrounders absorbing the surplus of good seasons and leaving in bad ones, is the structure that survives. A herd sized to the best season is sold in the worst one, into a market full of cattle from properties that made the same mistake.

Brampton's focus

Our agricultural focus includes Wagyu and the relationship between cattle, country and management. We approach production decisions as part of the whole business, with attention to welfare, seasonal conditions and the intended market, and we treat the fit between the animal, the feed and the market as the thing that has to be right before anything else matters. That approach is set out on Cattle and Wagyu and in what we do.

Related reading

• Rotational grazing: recovery, stocking decisions and monitoring
• Cattle and Wagyu

Sources

• Meat & Livestock Australia, More Beef from Pastures: Meeting market specifications
• Meat & Livestock Australia, More Beef from Pastures: Setting directions
• Meat & Livestock Australia, More Beef from Pastures: Hormonal growth promotants (Tool 7.04)
• Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, Hormonal growth promotants

This is an explanatory article. It does not describe the specifications of any particular Brampton cattle.