AUSTRALIA-BRAHMAN CROSS CATTLE.
Euro crossbred weaners off their mothers direct to a feedlotter has minimised time and labour costs and set an enviable return on investment for Moura cattle producers Ken and Claudia Stephenson.
The Stephensons are members of the CQ BEEF (Better Economic and Environmental Futures) Moura Group representing like-minded graziers who share an open book approach to their business objectives.
Queensland Primary Industries and Fisheries senior cattle extension officer Ken Murphy, the co-ordinator of the CQ BEEF Moura Group, said the Stephensons hosted an April 7 on-property group inspection of their 2025 hectare cattle breeding enterprise based at Wilgavale 3km west of Moura.
Mr Murphy said that having a clear understanding of how the business operated in relation to the property layout, land types, infrastructure, water availability and pasture development paved the way for frank discussion.
"All Moura Group members will ultimately host a meeting on their individual properties, a shared process that provides an alternative appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of each family business," Mr Murphy said.
The Stephenson family has a long association with Wilgavale, a brigalow-softwood scrub block surveyed off the original Moura Station. Ken’s uncle, Charlie selected the property with a Dawson River frontage in 1938. Charlie and his brothers, Dick and Jim (Ken’s father), walked their small dairy herd from Mulgildie in the North Burnett to establish a dairying business.
Ken and Claudia sold their former Baralaba district grazing property in 1988 and bought Wilgavale, a well-watered holding sown to buffel grass pasture with Seca stylo legume and areas of native pasture.
The country is predominantly sandy loam soils running down to a mix of heavy black and forest loam soils. While the lighter buffel country still responds well after rain, a natural depletion of soil nitrogen has prompted a return of black spear grass.
Ken Stephenson said the well-subdivided paddock layout was serviced by 4-barb internal laneway fences enabling cattle to be easily mustered by motorbikes or quad bikes back to a centrally-positioned yard complex.
"We built the all steel yards 15 years ago using railway line from the former Moura-Baralaba line and heavy scrap cable from Moura coal mine plus RHS steel rails," Mr Stephenson said.
"We run 120 to 130 breeders to a paddock and can comfortably hold mustered stock in two cooler paddocks and a holding yard to be worked as required through a seven-way overhead drafting system."
Wilgavale generally runs 350 to 400 breeders with a targeted turn-off of steers and cull heifers at 240-270kg liveweight aged eight to nine months. For the past four years, all the weaners have been sold privately to a commercial feedlot.
Mr Stephenson said they trialled their first Limousin bull over grey Brahman cows in 1983 and have continued their Euro crossbreeding program with Limousin and Charbray bulls.
"Our crossbreeding challenge has been maintaining the Bos indicus content in our breeders as we have not used a Brahman bull for several years," he said.
"For the first time in 20 years, we were forced to control cattle ticks on a line of home-bred Euro cross cows in one of our heavy black soil paddocks.
"We acknowledge the F1 breeders are the better performers but to maintain hybrid vigour and tick resistance while using Euro bulls, our next step will be to buy in 70 to100 quality Brahman heifers annually to simply management.
"Breeders are control mated from October to February with three per cent bulls and all females are pregnancy tested with culls sold direct to works," he said.
Stockwater was pumped from dams and permanent holes in Back Creek, a Dawson River anabranch, to an elevated 900,000 litre capacity turkey nest dam and reticulated through underground polypipe to paddock troughs.
Seven years ago, the Stephensons used a Natural Heritage Trust funding grant to fence off the banks of Back Creek to control cattle access and prevent erosion.
Brigalow regrowth was successfully blade-ploughed 10 years ago. Mr Stephenson plans to renovate patches of ironwood, yellow wood and lime bush with an Alfarm plough and will apply Tebulan to control sally wattle on the heavier soils.
Moura Group visitors were impressed with Wilgavale’s extensive grass cover and a simple but effective paddock rotational grazing management approach based on visual assessment.
"For the past nine years, we have used a 140ha silk sorghum stand split in half with a two-wire electric fence as a strategy to take pressure off selected grass paddocks.
"The silk sorghum has paid for itself many times and the only maintenance has been a winter weed control herbicide spray application in 2007.
"As the silk productivity has now run down, we are weighing up our options to either replant with hybrid forage sorghum with a nitrogen fertiliser boost or plant a forage legume such as Dolichos lab lab," Mr Stephenson said.
Despite the proliferation of parthenium weed throughout the Dawson Valley, Mr Stephenson has maintained a rigorous spot spraying program and, when combined with conservative stocking rates, Wilgavale is virtually parthenium weed-free.
