Rose Grange Pastoral Company’s calm approach stands the test of time
Attention to detail and a caring approach prove a winning mix for beef at Rose Grange Pastoral Company.
A MEASURED and calm approach to livestock production has Rose Grange Pastoral Company well and truly passing the taste test.
Operated by the Richmond family, Rose Grange is a mixed-farming business comprising beef, prime lambs and cropping across 3220ha. Its headquarters are at Little River, near Geelong, with its portfolio also including the Trawalla property at Beaufort, west of Ballarat.
Jock Richmond is the fourth-generation family member to run the company with manager Jim Gaylard overseeing the day-to-day operations at Trawalla.
Rose Grange runs about 900 Angus females, turning off grass-finished steers and cull heifers annually to the lucrative Meat Standards Australia trade, 14,000 supermarket-weight prime lambs as well as about 2023ha of cereal and canola crops.
The beef arm of the business was recognised last month when Rose Grange took out the most outstanding Victorian beef producer category, for larger herds, at the MSA meat quality awards in Lancefield.
Rose Grange has been a registered Meat Standards Australia producer for nine years and Jock described carcass feedback provided by MSA as a valuable business tool which he used to inform herd management decisions.
SPLITTING HEIRS
ROSE Grange runs a split-calving operation, with 60 per cent of females calving in spring and the remainder in autumn.
The herd is based on Dunoon Angus bloodlines from the Harbison family of Holbrook in southern NSW. Jim said the business aimed to match stocking rates to its predicted spring flush of grass.
“We get cold winters and limited amount of growth through winter but we get a massive spring flush,” Jim said.
“I guess through our winter times we seem a little bit overstocked but we need to be to utilise the amount of grass we grow in the spring.”
Little River receives about 470mm of rain a year. To the end of September this year, it has received about 300mm, only about 30mm behind average.
Beaufort has recorded 480mm of rain for the year, just 30mm behind its average to the end of September. Its average rainfall total is 680mm.
The cattle are run predominantly on a mix of phalaris clover and ryegrass pastures, with supplementary silage in the summer and cereal hay in the winter for fibre.
Rose Grange grows all its own hay and crops for cattle production, including grazing wheat and grazing oat varieties. Steers are finished on an oat-lucerne mix or grazing oat or wheat varieties.
The company is a member of the JBS Farm Assurance Program. All cattle are bred and finished on the same property at sold at target weights of 500-550kg liveweight, or 300-330kg carcass weight, at 15-18 months of age.
“That’s generally putting on 1-1.5kg a day from birth,” Jim said.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
JOCK said the business used the myMSA platform to access carcass feedback and tools, and routinely checked the herd’s average MSA Index, a weighted average between 30 and 80 of the predicted eating quality of 39 MSA cuts in the carcass.
Jock said Rose Grange’s ultimate goal was to have an average MSA index of 65, “which is pretty high”.
“We like to be between 60 and 65 if we can,” Jock said. “I’m a big believer that if we can maintain the eating quality of our meat for the end user, it augurs well for our product.
“A good eating experience is paramount, no matter what you’re eating.”
Jock said they were “constantly tweaking things” within the operation and if they discovered their index was down, they would analyse feedback “and pull it apart to see if a batch of steers were, for example, lower in intramuscular fat or if the eye muscle area was back”.
“If our index isn’t where we’re aiming for, then we want to know why,” Jock said.
RIVERINA MURRAY COD FARM A DAM GOOD IDEA
KEY INGREDIENT
FOR Jock, the key to managing cattle for eating quality compliance is nutrition.
“A big thing for us is ensuring the animals don’t have any setbacks at any stage of their life from a nutritional point of view, which is not easy when you experience bad seasons,” Jock said.
“The weaning process is a stressful time for a calf, so it’s really about minimising stress and making sure nutrition is as good as we can possibly get it at all times.”
Jim said a calm approach to managing stock was “one of the main things we live by here”.
“When they are in the yards, they are handled with the utmost respect, we don’t put them in any stressful situation,” he said.
“When we are loading them or when we’ve got a consignment going out, we’ll generally get that consignment ready perhaps two weeks prior to them leaving the property.
“We put them back out on pasture and then bring them in slowly and load them straight on to the truck.
“We are finding that our number of dark cutters are reduced dramatically because of our handling of stock and stress levels in our animals.
Rose Grange had about 500 animals consigned to MSA in the past two years and enjoyed a compliance rate of 97.7 per cent and an average index of just shy of 63.
Marmon Hill tops the chops
Few know the secret to successfully breeding prized first-cross ewes better than South Australia’s Ian Farley. And here he shares what he knows and how he got there.
Fruits of family labour pay off
The bank was set to foreclose when Helen Aggeletos took over her family’s citrus business in South Australia’s Riverland. Read how she turned it all around.