Two decades of careful choosing has reigned supreme for Chartwell Farms
Sound selection principles drive a business that makes the most of premiums.
DOING well in livestock is all about the right meat for the market for one central Victorian producer.
Keith Diprose has managed Chartwell Farms at Romsey for more than two decades, producing both weaner cattle and prime lambs for a market hungry for quality.
Keeping at the top of the game has meant changing tack at times, but Keith’s willingness to reinvent the livestock operation has allowed it to remain at the top of its respective fields. He runs a 300-cow Angus herd and a 2000-head first-cross ewe flock on several farms around Romsey totalling about 1100ha.
FIRE RISK THREAT TO FAMILY TRADITION
ISLE OF DREAMS TURNS INTO REALITY
The 600-700mm rainfall country has a feed peak in spring, and the management of the cattle and sheep is designed to take advantage of this. When Keith arrived at the Romsey farms, it was to a herd of Hereford cattle where the heifers were joined to Angus. It was his job to convert the herd to pure Angus, and after looking at different bloodlines, he settled on Banquet Angus at Mortlake.
“I liked the cattle because were flat boned, and you need good solid bone in cattle to carry plenty of meat,” Keith said, adding the temperament of the cattle and Banquet’s client support also stood out.
A bull’s Breedplan figures are carefully studied before purchase with a focus on growth and eye muscle area. Keith also looks at cow families that have performed well in the operation but will “never buy just out of the book (catalogue)”. “We don’t pay top price, but we generally pay $12,000-$15,000. This year we paid $13,000,” he said. “I like to look at 600-day growth as you want the buyers of your cattle to do well out of them and come back to buy them the next year.”
WEIGHT AND SEE
HIGHER birthweights do not concern Keith, more the cattle’s shape.
“I know that the Banquet cattle are long animals and have enough experience to be able to pick a bull that could cause calving issues,” he said.
Keith added European Union-accreditation to the herd several years ago after noticing a premium for the weaners when they were sold at Yea.
It was a tweak to the already successful enterprise, but one that could generate more returns.
“For a while, the EU premium was quite high so we decided to go down that path,” he said.
“It is not that much extra work. We scan the cows and calves at calf marking and we are diligent with our record keeping.”
But that premium seemed to disappear at Yea, which caused a U-turn on where the calves were sent.
Rather than abandon the accreditation, Keith decided to send the annual drop of weaners to Hamilton sales instead, where the premium was still gained. “It costs about $23 to send the weaners to Hamilton, compared to about $15 to send them to Yea,” Keith said. “We are seeing a premium for EU calves sold in Hamilton that in most years is up to 10c/kg, so that makes it worth our while to send them the extra distance.
“There are more abattoirs and backgrounders who are set up for the EU market down there and so why not take the cattle to the market that wants them.
CALF STRETCH
THE calves usually weigh 350-400kg at about nine months of age, with Keith achieving his aim to sell weaners weighing more than 400kg.
“I’d always wanted to get them to that weight and we have done it once, with a pen of 21 that weighed 403kg,” he said.
This year, the Angus weaners made 314-322c/kg, a premium in a market that was affected by the poor season across much of eastern Australia.
The best average for Chartwell Farms was achieved in 2017, when 77 Angus steer weaners averaged $1337.
Keith said breeding the right type of cattle was instrumental in attracting high prices.
In a unique set-up for a larger herd, Keith uses single bulls with a group of cows. Each bull is put with a group of about 30 cows.
The advantage is that the sire of all calves is known, almost like a stud operation. The only danger occurs if a bull breaks down.
“We are very conscious of monitoring our bulls. We feed our cows twice to three times a week so if there is a problem, it wouldn’t be there for very long as we would bring in another bull,” Keith said.
“We are lucky in some ways that the operation has been built up from a number of smaller farms, so we have a lot of smaller paddocks ranging from a few hectares to 12-15ha, so we can do these single-sire matings.
“It also allows us to rest paddocks to allow feed to grow.”
BREED PLAN
ALONG with the bulls bought from Banquet, Keith uses litter mates from each drop of heifers to join back over their half-sisters.
This, he said, reduced the cost of sires and was only possible due to the care taken with breeding high-quality Angus cattle over the past two decades.
“We generally keep three to four bull calves to use over the heifers, which saves us from having to buy heifer bulls,” Keith said.
“We have some pretty handy cows and we generally pick out a few (bull) calves at calf marking, based on their shape and bone.”
The Angus herd is run alongside a flock of first-cross ewes, which are joined to a mix of terminal sires. While the older ewes are joined to Poll Dorset rams, maiden ewes are joined to Charolais rams after Keith saw their potential on a farm tour in Ireland.
“We don’t want to have lambing problems, and the Charollais lambs are only little when they are born,” Keith said.
Lambs are sold onwards from the first or second week of October.
About half are shorn and taken through to service the old-lamb market, with the last draft consigned earlier this month.
It’s been a stellar year for the lamb operation, something that Keith said he had never seen before.
“We have sold 2200 lambs and averaged $172, and for the first time ever, got $200 for suckers back in October,” he said. “The wool off the sheep is also making 800c/kg so it’s a great time for the sheep too.”
But herein lies the challenge: what to run on the best country and what to run on the lighter areas.
“Right now, we are giving our best country to the sheep simply because the returns are there,” Keith said.
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