By Linda Mantova
Laroona Pastoral Company is a family beef operation deeply instilled in the Brahman breed.
Operated by Peter and Dal Glenwright, their daughter, Jess and son-in-law, Mat Hoffmann, as well as their son, Lyle and his wife, Bridie, the family has been a dominant presence in the North Queensland cattle industry for several decades.
The multi-generational enterprise operates over three properties, with their home place, ‘Laroona’, covering 30,364 hectares, 150 kilometres north of Charters Towers.
There they run between 1500 and 2000 Brahman breeders, and have been buying bulls at the Rockhampton Brahman Week Sale for the past four years.
As one of the volume buyers at this year’s sale in October, Mat Hoffmann said they purchased 13 bulls for an average of $9538.
That was slightly up on their average of $8071 last year, when they were again bulk buyers taking home 14 bulls.
“We normally buy between 10 and 15 bulls up at Rocky, as you have so many bulls to look through to pick out what you like,” Mr Hoffmann said.
“We buy a mix, but after going there for four years, we are starting to work out the studs that have bulls better suited to our country, which is a mix of harder Granite type country and better black soil,” he said.
“We are starting to go back to those same studs that we’ve bought from before, and have done well for us, including Token, Hazelton, Brahrock, Viva, Ahern and Raglan to name a few.
“Prior to that, we bought paddock bulls and some out of the Wilangi sale at Charters Towers.”
Mr Hoffmann said the bulls they purchased at RBWS normally ran with their maiden heifers.
“So we try and buy bulls that suit that job – bulls that aren’t too big and don’t have too high a birth weight, for ease of calving,” he said.
“We also want bulls that adapt and don’t fall away too much when they get home. It’s a bit tougher country than where most of them come from, and especially if they’ve been grain-fed during their sale prep.
“The bulls we are starting to buy now are the ones that adapt better and hold on better.”
With Laroona being their major breeding base, Mr Hoffmann said the family also had country further north at Ingham, where they sent their steer portion.
“‘Springers’ is the 617ha block of cattle and cane country at Ingham and is run by Lyle and Bridie. We send the steers up there averaging between 480 and 500 kilograms, to grow them out,” he said.
“The steers go up there at about two years of age, and then we finish them for around six months.
“They are run on improved pastures – mainly pangola and brachiaria – and supplemented with molasses with minerals and protein meals mixed in it.
Traditionally turning steers off for the live export market at 590-600kg, Mr Hoffmann said this year would be different.
“We target the slaughter boats because finished cattle are hard to find in December/January, but this year we went to the saleyards. We usually send around 600 steers annually and this year they are being sold through the Charters Towers saleyards,” he said.
“The lead pen weighed 585kg and sold for $4.40/kg.”
Mr Hoffmann said they would send around 120 head in every week until the sales finish in early December.
“When they go on the boats, we normally aim to get them out of ‘Springers’ by January, as the country gets too wet up there so we get them out before the wet season sets in,” he said.
“The last couple of years they’ve all gone on the boats, but we are not set in a pattern where we only sell into one market – we sell to wherever the money is, and this year it’s hopefully at the saleyards.”
Keeping their replacement heifers, Mr Hoffmann said they tried to retain around 350 each year.
“The remainder of the heifers we spay, and they go down to our other small fattening block south of Townsville, at Cape Cleveland,” he said.
“They fatten up and finish off there, on a similar molasses-based mix with protein meals, and are sent up to the Blennerhassett family’s Bingil Bay Beef, north of Tully, which we’ve had an ongoing deal with for a fair while now.”
Mr Hoffmann said their bulls went out at the start of January or late December, depending on the year.
“We do three rounds of mustering annually – the first in January, where we brand the bulk of our calves, and then our second round in May, when we pull off the bulk of our weaners and brand the late calves, and during a third round in July/August, we pull the last of the weaners off and pull the bulls out.”
He described the traits of the Brahman breed that he admired, naming hardiness as number one.
“You have to have cattle that suit your country. If we had better country, we’d probably have a Euro breed of Charolais or Angus, but you’ve got to have cattle to suit your country and Brahmans are it,” he said.
“If you want to keep getting calves every year, that’s our only option.”
“We cull pretty heavily on temperament, and it’s a big thing when we are selecting bulls at Rocky. If there’s one that’s not right in that aspect, it’ll get crossed off the list pretty quick.”
Taking part in the inaugural ABBA Feedlot trial earlier this year, Mr Hoffmann said the steers went well, but didn’t win any blue ribbons.
“For us, we didn’t go in it to try and win the competition – we put steers in it for ourselves, to see how we measure up regarding what we are doing at home,” he said.
“We wanted to know the difference between what we’re doing at the moment as far as having these cattle on molasses and the cost of finishing them, and how much it would cost us to finish those same cattle in a feedlot.
“We put in our average steers. We didn’t go and pick the best ones out, but rather the ones that we thought were our average, so we could compare it cost-wise.
“It was good to see if it was more profitable to go down that track and feed steers in a feedlot, or keep doing what we’re doing, but obviously there’s lots of variables in that eg grain prices etc.”
