Head Shepherd
Mark Ferguson from neXtgen Agri brings you the latest in livestock, genetics, innovation and technology. We focus on sheep and beef farming in Australia and New Zealand and the people doing great things in those industries.
Head Shepherd
Unleashing the Potential of Grass with Michael Gooden
Maximising the potential of the grass you grow is a critical component of pasture-based agriculture; doing it well is what separates the good farmers from the great. In this episode of the Head Shepherd podcast, we discuss this and more with Michael Gooden, an Angus seed stock business expert and a champion of sustainable cattle farming practices.
Michael hails from NSW, Australia, where he and his family have taken a unique, future-focused approach to their Angus seed stock business. They have been instrumental in emphasising the importance of breeding animals that can thrive on grass.
"The reality in our business is that we manage grass, so we had to sell our grass to the highest bidder and, for us, that seed stock business was going to be an enterprise that could be the highest bidder for the grass that we grow."
Michael gives us an insightful tour of the mechanics of a grass-based farming system. He explains how they match stocking rates with pasture growth curves and how they make economic decisions about what stock stays and goes during the ebb and flow of the farming year, highlighting how data collection can play a crucial role in making informed decisions during stressful times.
"One upside to having a performance-recorded beef herd is that we've got every animal ranked, so we know where that [stocking rate] line can go," says Michael.
Michael touched on the challenges and strategies for agricultural businesses. He shared his thoughts on the importance of having everyone on the same page and working in the same direction to maximise efficiency and progress.
Michael also covers the impending price drops in the agriculture industry and stresses the importance of controlling what you can and being aware of the situation.
Michael has an inspiring, forward-thinking approach to farming; his insights and experiences serve as a valuable guide for anyone interested in improving their production and making a commitment to sustainable farming practices for the future.
Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited. We help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best: info@nextgenagri.com.
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Welcome to the Head Shepherd podcast. I'm your host, mark Ferguson, ceo at Next Gen Agri International, where we help livestock managers to get the best out of their stock. I want to take this opportunity to thank our friends at MSD Animal Health in Orflex for sponsoring Head Shepherd again this season, and I'm also excited to introduce our mates at Heinegger as brand new sponsors of the show. Msd in Orflex, or perhaps better known as Cooper's Animal Health in Australia, offer one of New Zealand, australia's, largest livestock product portfolios, with a comprehensive suite of animal health and management products connected through identification, traceability and monitoring solutions. Like us, they see how the wealth and breadth of information born out of this podcast can help their men and their farming clients achieve their mission of the science of healthier animals.
Mark Ferguson:Heinegger will need a little introduction to our audience. A market leader and one-stop shop for wool harvesting and animal fibre removal, together with an expanding range of agricultural products and inputs, the Heinegger name is synonymous with quality, reliability and precision. The Heinegger team have a deep understanding of livestock agriculture, backed by Swiss engineering and a family business dedicated to manufacturing the best. It's fantastic to have both of these sponsors supporting us and bringing Head Shepherd to each week, and now it's time to get on with this week's episode. Welcome back to Head.
Mark Ferguson:Shepherd underway again this week. It's been a while since we recorded one, but we're great to have Michael Gooden joining us today. Welcome, Michael.
David Gooden:Hi Mark.
Mark Ferguson:Michael, I guess we'll start with a bit of territory. Today You're an Heinegger sprater and a consultant with RCS, so we're keen to drill into those aspects of your business. But maybe just a bit of background about where you're farming and what you're doing.
David Gooden:Yeah, we've got a family property 70 kilometres west of Wagga in southern East Wales. I'm a fourth generation farmer and my wife and I are farming in proportion to that property that we took on our own in about 2008. We're just running that. Is that solely cattle? Yeah, it is. It's 100% livestock. We trade some sheep every now and then, just to remind us of why we don't do it every now and then, I suppose, but we just use that. The trading side of it is pasture management and keeping our stocking rate carrying capacity matched up is that tool we use. But our main enterprise is a small seed stock Angus seed stock business, which we established in 2016.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, right I saw old man Craig Angus and one of the breeders with Faro Cowl Australia.
David Gooden:Yeah, we joined up. I saw Kit come out to Australia Kit Faro in 2014 or 2015. He came out to beef and really resonated with what we were trying to do. From what I was thinking about, what is an ideal animal? We traded cattle for probably five or six years and you buy in animals and you see very different performances, so you're getting a fair bit of exposure why some animals do, some animals don't, different temperaments, different all these different things, and so that really probably gave me a real interest in the breeding side of it.
David Gooden:I was fortunate enough to work on a large-scale Angus seed stock business in my mid-year at uni and that also probably then, thinking back on it playing with the seed, to want to go down this path and that, yeah, when the opportunity came up and we thought, well, this is something that we can do, the reality in our business is where we manage grass, so for us, we had to sell our grass to the highest bidder and for us, that seed stock business was going to be an enterprise that could be the highest bidder for the grass that we grow.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, and we'll definitely get back to those principles and I guess core to your cattle breeding is that grass-based system. So I guess trying to breed an animal that will finish on grass rather than on grain, I guess, and having that maybe longer-term view that that's where cattle will go. And certainly there's been anyone that's travelled in the US would have seen that A lot of grass-fed being a bit of a marketing campaign in California and a lot of consumers chasing grass-fed, even a little bit of chuckle it's been a few years since I've been there but chuckle that was selling hot dogs in the corner store that were grass-fed hot dogs, so obviously grass-fed bits of cow anyway.
David Gooden:Yeah, well, yeah, only God knows what's in the hot dog. I think, on a serious note, though, third-large, that we are drawing a line in the sand with the grass-fed. I think there's a nutritional perspective of the grass-fed product, like the fat profile that's changing in it and all that. And then there's the environmental aspect of running those animals. There's probably the social licence, animal welfare part of it. But I really think the big thing for us looking forward, like we've got to be 10 to 20 years ahead of our customers and we sort of say well, we breed a bull that's going to last eight to 10 years and a cow's going to last 10 to 15. So in 20, 25 years time I don't think we'll be able to have animals locked up in a pen being fed on grain, and that's a pretty big statement in the current market. But that's where we believe we need to head. So we're breeding animals that are going to be able to be raised 100% on grass, finished on grass, meet the consumer requirements.
David Gooden:The big one, I think, is the emissions. So we believe we'll be able to offset our own on-farm emissions reasonably comfortably. But I don't think we'll be able to go down the path and offset in a feedlot in an abattoir, we'll probably get the abattoir covered off, but definitely not, especially if you go out to 300 days on feed or something. So that's just something we've got. We've been quite transparent about that. We don't think the industry can afford to do that realistically. So there's plenty of a suds that will go down, that stay on that path, but we're drawing a line in the center saying that we're doing this for really different reasons, I suppose.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, it is interesting when you think we feed a human quality grain like a human quality food stuff, then the trade of a cow to produce or a lamb or whatever like that whole grain feeding is often think about it. Obviously, we know what it's done and there's markets that pay premium for it or require long fed. But it is interesting if we think out that longer term, what that means for emissions as well as welfare and whole other things.
David Gooden:I think it's the unintended consequence of it. Like there's no doubt when old mate started feeding cattle he'd think, oh geez, these guys grow quicker. But then he didn't really and no one preempted it. But what happens to the profile of the meat when it's fed that high starch diet? And what happens nutritionally? And then also probably not realizing as things grow and get bigger and bigger? Like when he started feeding cattle he didn't envisage having 60,000 cattle locked up in these big pens and then 40 degree day coming along and 2% of them die. Like that wasn't.
David Gooden:But now that we're in this world where we have to be accountable to those types of outcomes, that type of activity is not going to pass the social license down the track and it's really indefensible in a lot of ways. So we as a business and our clients, we want to distance ourselves from that and I mean there's been a lot of great things that have come out of it. Like food security is pretty important. I do like three meals a day, so we can't deny that. But I think as an industry, if there was large scale change away from that crop, land, crop production to feed livestock locked in a pen, that food security issues would be resolved anyway probably.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, I guess there's always innovation when the onset of change. I guess we do get relaxing to things that have worked well. Yeah, definitely, you can see why the industry has grown and it makes it really in terms of efficiency of production it's been good. Yeah, all the stuff you've just covered about is definitely valid. I guess that brings us back to the kind of cattle you've got to breed. Think about that system when you've got a grain finishing outcome, you can afford to have pretty high growth big mature cattle that are going to be really efficient in that feedlot and focus on things like RFOI in that feedlot. It's the type of animal that you might breed without outcome in mind.
Mark Ferguson:It's quite different than the one that you think that you would breed with this grass for the outcome in mind.
David Gooden:Yes, very much so. We're very maternal traits really important. We're focusing on mature cow weight, really trying to push it down. Positive ribbon rump fat I suppose that's how I sort of got onto you and, listening to a couple of your podcasts, thinking hang on, this guy's talking, because usually mainstream Angus guys aren't really talking that All of fertility is really important. What we really found, though, is that, although you might be running the opposite direction to the mainstream Angus, a lot of those traits actually complement each other that ribbon rump fat, not going extremes with the carcass like the EMA or IMF I think that'll happen over time but we really are putting pressure on the mature cow weight.
David Gooden:Growth will take care of itself. We find, then, fertility is gestational length, birth weight, all those things. They're falling into place really well. In the scheme of things. We haven't been doing it for that long. We still have a lot to learn, and we're still certainly haven't bred the perfect cow yet, but we know which direction we're heading and why we're heading there. It's been really exciting, really interesting to poke along with it.
Mark Ferguson:I guess for doing a bit of work on making sure we kind of do a Zyde index that breeds for that type of cattle. I guess the industry indexes are necessarily well suited to the kind of cattle you want to market. We're doing a favor to thinking entirely about how we optimize those traits. As you said, there's a lot of traits. All the traits are as equally important as they are in any, whichever cattle we are chasing, but it's their relative importance, I suppose it matters. I guess we're on a grass-based system, something that has to be very much front of mind. With the Chateau Bell Nenow and the times where you are there In Woggle, the sun is generally going to be drying and they're going to be adding a low-quality feed stuff. There's a need for an animal that can come through that while either lactating or getting pregnant again.
Mark Ferguson:That's a bit of pressure on that cow in that system where they're with a harsh, dry summer.
David Gooden:Yeah, well, that is true, but that's probably where, when we're making a decision on what enterprise should we be running and how are we going to be running this grass business. What should we be doing? We were looking at a pasture growth curve and the beauty of the cow is that your peak lactation and pregnancy is all happening at the one time. All we have to really do is nail one or two months of the year right and then the rest of the time the animals we really do run our cows as hard as we can. We're getting that, matching our pasture growth curve to our animal requirement. We're spring carving. That all happens within six to eight weeks. We get the peak lactation happens and we get the cow pregnant again. Ideally they've got enough excess feed to put that condition on their backs. Then really it's a matter of taking that off them and hopefully not taking as much off or too much off with the requirements to get them back in calf the following year. We really like having cows that don't make it back in. We do want to run them as hard as we can. If 20% or 30% don't or hopefully not 30%, but 10% to 20% don't get in calf, that's a good thing for us because that means we've been running the rest of them hard enough to put that pressure on the fertility. It's great.
David Gooden:The old analogy is the haystacks on their backs. We put it on in the springtime. We tend to have a reasonable amount of dry feed over the summer. It's a matter of it's an economic decision. Do we use your area or not to utilize that dry feed? What are the conditions of the cow? What's it done like? When do we wean? That's always a big lever to pull. We can make those decisions when the time's right and that allows us to get the cow through and they don't need a lot of feed. I was saying to a bullclother the day there was a prospective client and he goes oh, you know, so your cows run on the sniff of an oily rag and it was like well, actually I don't even want the oil, I just want the rag. I just want them to run on as lean as you possibly can. Then they just do that work when the feed's in front of them to match up with that natural supply and demand that we've got.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, it's interesting, certainly certainly a discussion we have all the time and whether it's cattle or sheep, about how we optimize that as genetics to be the animals that do exactly that, that can handle that, whether it's a 100-day winter in New Zealand or the 130 or whatever 150-day summer in Australia, well, the thing that we've really found, mark, is that we especially as we've changed our grazing management over the years is we can grow feed any day of the year and not have feed any day of the year.
David Gooden:So it's sort of we're actually really flexible, so that probably even more so have an animal that can utilize that feed any day of the year and know that it's not being wasted. So if we do put conditions score on animals in the autumn time, we've got a choice to either we run more animals or yeah, I suppose running more animals is always the option or do something with a class of animal that we can put weight on. Then, conversely, if we don't have that well, we've got the option to take the fat off them as well. So we're trying to utilize what's in front of us the whole time.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, I think it's well talking about sheep money, but it's going to apply some to cattle, that whole body energy, to the animals that in times of plenty are storing energy. And we've seen it in, I've studied it, I guess, more intensely in sheep, but I'm on the team. But there's animals out there that, given the same amount of feed opportunity, will store a bit of energy and some won't store very little. If I think I store much at all, they won't put any fat down, whether that's internally or subcontinuously. There's just animals that are better at storing energy and I guess that's what we're talking about. We've got our measures of red and rub fat and then I guess the condition score of the cows as well. They're all traits that we're trying to look at so that we can, essentially, we're trying to build that energy store and using any measures we can get to estimate that.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, no, exactly right. Michael, you were a consultant with RCS. If you're interested to hear how you ended up getting involved and sort of I guess that learning journey you've been on and taking many others on as one of those teachers within that system. Obviously there's lots of people we interact with been through the Grasing for Profit course. That's pretty well known across Australia.
David Gooden:Yeah, well, I suppose, like most people who work at RCS, you walk in the door as a student rocking up to a Grasing for Profit school. So, yeah, that's what I did. I actually initially did holistic management in that 2010 with a fellow called Bruce Ward. That was really great. Then that sort of progressed down the track in about I think it was 2016 or 2017.
David Gooden:I went and did the Grasing for Profit here in Wagga with Terry McCosker. Then, yeah, it was, I think, 2019. Then I was approached by Terry to come and work for them. So, yeah, I was working full-time there for a couple of years. Then, over the last 18 months, two years I've stepped that back just to a part-time consultancy now. But it's been an incredible experience for me. You're very privileged to be able to work with some great people and get some insights into some really interesting decisions that people are making.
David Gooden:So, yeah, it's been a really great journey that the focus is on the livestock and the grazing management. Also, the other big thing that probably when I remember when I first started there, terry was like, well, you think you're here to talk about grazing management and business planning and all this. It's really all about the people. That's what every issue comes back down to. That. I'd had probably an experience in and around that over a few years, but then, yeah, really, now that we do know that that's from a business management perspective or even just a human perspective it's all about how we think and what we do and how we make decisions and all that which is really interesting. It becomes really exciting then.
Mark Ferguson:I think anyone that listens to me very much knows that I'm really interested in psychology and just the human element. I was thinking all day, all the time I suppose. But we don't have a. I think we spend a lot of time on agriculture trying to teach skills, whereas in reality we know that farmers can do anything they want to do or believe is useful to do. We're not in a. I don't think we have a skill shortage. We have a sort of a desire shortage or a belief shortage, almost that it's knowing what's possible and having someone to coach along the line seems to be able to achieve amazing things. Like everyone can learn almost anything if they have the need to or the desire to.
David Gooden:Yeah, no, that's right. Henry Ford quote, isn't it? If you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. Yeah, it's a challenge that us, yes, face in terms of very much the training that they do at a seven-day school. It's pretty well the life changing, groundbreaking in a lot of ways. But then there's actually, unfortunately, like a low uptake from people who are going on in the scheme of things, going on and making big changes. That gets back down to the question around why how people are making decisions. What's the blockages, what are the reasons why? Because we're very fortunate, because we probably working. We are working with the people who are going on with it, hence why we're working with them. We're seeing the changes that occur in their lives is really powerful and very rewarding. Sometimes you wish well, why can't we get these other guys to see what is happening and what the benefits can come along? So, yeah, it's a really interesting piece and that does get back down to what motivates people, how do they make decisions, what that whole human psychology element is.
Mark Ferguson:Without giving away any of the secrets, what it's like if you go into a new business to help or to coach them to change. What are the common things that need to change in the business to get them on a different path?
David Gooden:Well, understanding what Ensuring they've got direction, I suppose, is the first thing. So quite often we'll sort of be quite transparent about goals and visions, what people are wanting to achieve and, one year through a year, five year, top of thing, obviously, before you're walking in the business you understand what the stage and age are, whether it's multi-generational or however that's operating. So getting a head around that is really important. Yeah, we're very big on setting that direction, because it's very hard or you'll get anywhere if you don't know where you want to be. And if you do know where you want to be, well then it's about enjoying the journey rather than just completely being focused on that destination.
David Gooden:But that's really important and the analogy from our CSIS perspective is sort of the three-legged pot. So you've got the land outcomes that they want to Ecologically, what they want their environment to look like. You've got their business in terms of what type of return on asset they want to be generating, what turnover they need, what their business requirements are, and then, from a production perspective, what enterprises they're running, what's their land class suited to, what attributes is the property got that are going to allow them to run certain enterprises? And then, more importantly, is the people then. So if you don't have those three legs balanced, then the pot gets wobbly and the people fall out.
David Gooden:So that's really the basic principle and that ties around to the breeding side of it, because a lot of times you're talking about what type of enterprise someone's running and it's like, oh well, we just don't really have a direction. So it's actually a really rewarding conversation to say, well, look, what type of markets, how have you gone finishing your livestock? Or do you like a breeding enterprise or a trading enterprise and all those types of things. So you can have some pretty basic conversations around, but it can really make a big impact to how they're running their grass management, their business, their turnover, all those types of things. So a lot of levers can be pulled really effectively.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, and often it's just that taking that step back or getting everyone's pretty close to the businesses, very much in the business and worried about the mob of sheep that they're drenching or the mob of cattle that they're shifting or whatever, and not getting back that level to, I guess, to think that longer term, is there any? I guess everyone thinks that it's okay for them. They've got that nice veggie patch of a farm or they've got the rain or whatever. Is there ever a business that can't shift and be better?
David Gooden:No, I wouldn't think so. It depends on, like, there's no utopia as such. That's the beauty of agriculture, is that? And that's what keeps it interesting? Because it's not.
David Gooden:Every business is different. Their physical attributes, landscape aspect, land class, all that can be different. Location, geographically, all that, the skill sets within the business are very different.
David Gooden:Probably the thing that isn't that different but people express it differently is what people want. Like most people want to be happy, healthy, live in a vibrant community, have time to spend on themselves, and all that, although they might not necessarily acknowledge that upfront, but usually that is actually the real commonality. So in a lot of ways it's actually getting back to giving them the freedom or license to say, to express that they want to achieve those types of things, and without, yeah, certainly going into specifics, but a lot of time, one part of the business or one member of the business might be disgruntled and the other's head down bum up, just trudging along. So it's about uniting the team, getting them on the common page and, like a lot of these things, you're far better off working together and the whole is greater than the sum of the part. So if you get husband and wife working together or generations working together. Then you can accumulate things very quickly and get a lot of progress in a short period of time and getting everyone on the same page.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, yeah, there's that story I'm thinking of I can't remember the details, but one of those ultra kayak races or whatever rowing races across the ocean and there was two partners and one asleep with the other one, and they disagreed on the direction, so one on paddle one way while the other one on paddle the other way when they're all awake. And you see that a little bit in business at some times, where there's two or three different parts that are definitely not rowing in the same direction and sometimes it's quite opposite, which is obviously not going to result in efficiency.
David Gooden:No well, nowadays you can't like. All these businesses are multi-million-dollar businesses and all this type of thing. So you've got to have things ticking along and the margins are changing. So even the astutely run businesses, especially this next couple of years or this financial year we're in now and looking forward things are going to be probably tough. As we see it.
David Gooden:I was looking at a business the other day, a couple of hundred cows operation and they're going to be their steer price. Sale price is going to be $1,000 less this year than last year. So your time is at by 250 or whatever. There's a pretty crude number straight up, and then their interest bills doubled as well as long as a few other things. So all of a sudden you've got a half a million dollar hole in a business that operationally very much the same Southern Newstead Wales type of thing. So they're not probably having the experience of that in the Northern Newstead Wales that we are experiencing at the moment. But then, yeah, if you threw in a few seasonal challenges as well, it's a big hold of feel. So I think being proactive, looking at that budgeting and what you can do you're creating some turnover in your business to cover off some of those holes is a pretty sound strategy.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah.
Mark Ferguson:So whether it's, at home or on some of those clients. Obviously we're going into a period of doesn't matter which way you look at it doesn't look good. Then our interest rates have got low prices for lamb, mutton, beef and wools on a slide as well. So then cost abduction has probably crept up in some pretty handy seasons and some pretty handy commodity cycles where people I guess we didn't need to be amazing managers over the last few years to still make on what are you sort of doing to try and whether the storm will set yourself up to not take too much of a hit in the storm?
David Gooden:Yeah Well, I mean, in this situation I'm really only comfortable talking about our own business. But I mean, the principles occur across the board, but it's about being aware of the situation. So pulling your head out of the sand and looking up and recognizing and acknowledging and dealing with it is probably the first step. We've been doing this for a little while and, like a lot of other businesses, we can't go and slash their overheads or whatever. That's all occurred 10 years ago. So if, being aware of our cost of production, we still go through line by line. And so look my mindset.
David Gooden:Bruce Ward talked with us about the our overhead should be inescapable expenses. So it's like things that you're morally and legally obliged to pay. If it's not on that line, well then, why are you doing it? And unfortunately, there's a lot of these things like interest insurance is one at the moment. It's just a bloody nightmare. It's just creeping away from you. It goes up and up every year. And do you need it? Can you afford it? Like what's all that top of thing?
David Gooden:But also from a business perspective, a turnover is really important. So you might not necessarily be making massive money on each transaction, but keeping the wheels turning are really important. So we don't want to be trying to starve a profit into our business. We've got to be keeping turnover In any case. Stock business is actually a real challenge because we can be 50, 60, 70% of our income can come on one day. So that's massive for us. But then that's why we do trade livestock and in our own business, that's why I work off farmers. Well, one, I've got the capacity to do it from a labor efficiency perspective, but two, that keeps that turnover coming over, coming in throughout the year. So that's really important. But just yeah, revisiting those, being aware of the situation, we're not going to change the markets or the prices or don't think that, oh, hang on, I'll hold on to these livestock a bit longer, the price is going to go up. All that stuff will outside your control. So we're just big believers in control what you can control and make those decisions as well as you can, rather than try and whinge and bitch about what's going on.
David Gooden:I know, personally I do not look at the weather forecast. It's not something that I get caught out with it because I get caught in the rain or the hot or whatever, but that's not something I and I, you know, in that 2018, 19,. I really got down on the dumps with. But looking at the forecast, and it was always the seven to 10 days out, was always a bit of rain on the horizon and all this and then you know, three days out in a drop off and you're out with a dust storm and it was horrible. It really really mucked around with me mentally and so now I was just like no, I'm not going to even look at that. I deleted the apps off my phone and I don't even look at it and it's. But it's really refreshing because it's like, well, I made a pact that I'll measure every millimeter of rain that we ever get. I'll measure it and I'll be grateful for it, but that's about all I can do. I'll deal with that decision as an outcome, knowing that that's happened rather than, you know, living in hope.
David Gooden:And that's the same thing from from our pasture budgeting.
David Gooden:You know we're very vigilant about that.
David Gooden:Probably this time of year we're going back down to sort of fortnoughtly pasture budget and to make sure that we're really comfortable with the food we've got on hand, how much we've got, how long is it going to last, the classes of stock that we've got? Have we got our stocking rate, the current capacity, matched up and that's where that, you know, we use a grating chart, so we're always forecasting forward, sort of that. Well, at the moment we're at 250 days sort of forward, which is really powerful this time of year. So we're making these decisions early and that's, you know, been especially here like this where that, where the livestock market has been sliding like we, we put a pretty big lever in February, march this year, which possibly in hindsight at the moment was a bit of an overreaction, but I was really pleased that we did Then rather than sort of doing that now was, yeah, we didn't know what was going to happen really with the markets, but the set certainly worked out. So, yeah, it's about controlling the control was, I suppose.
Mark Ferguson:A quick interruption here to remind you of Head Shepherd Premium and our consulting services at Next in Agri International. If you love this podcast and want to hear more of them, visit the hubnextinagricom and sign up for Head Shepherd Premium and get an extra podcast each week. If you're listening to this and thinking you really do want to maximize the genetic gain of your livestock and feel more confident around the decisions you're making on farm, then send me an email at mark at nextinagricom and we'll get in touch and see see where that takes us.
Mark Ferguson:So when you pull that label, is that a sort of predetermined plan? I often think that it does. When we're all guilty of this, whether we farm or not, we get right in the heat of the action and then it's a really hard time to make good decisions when you've got commodity market sliding or the weather's yet, or it's stopped raining or whatever the stress is. Humans generally aren't that fancy at making decisions under stress and so having those really well-defined plans that if it gets to this situation we know how we act and we don't have to think about it then, because we've already got to make a decision when you've got, when you're surrounded in clay with high beef prices, if you make some plans in, it's a much better place to run them.
David Gooden:Yeah well, that's one upside to having a performance recorded beef herd is that we've got every animal ranked one to, however, you know, one to 150 of our cows, and so we know where that line can go. But on top of that, you know, we probably run sort of 60, 70% of our carrying capacity as our cow herd and then the rest we float. So we can pull our lever down to 60 or 70% really quickly, which is what we did in February. So then, but then also too, you know we've got those all the other cows like this time of year is a great time we're carving, so anything obviously that has any troubles is gone and we probably tightening our carving window up as well. So the next time, the next opportunity we've got to look at going through our cow herd will be sort of pre-joining. So that will have another look then. And then you know, obviously everything's got to get in car for all that. So that'll happen in by the end of the year. We'll know those numbers. And then the next lever that we can pull will be our weaning lever.
David Gooden:So we're very fortunate, to about a third of our property we can irrigate, and whilst that's a whole trading exercise in itself in terms of the opportunity cost of water. It still allows us to be able to make those decisions on how much grass we can grow and you know how we're going to sell that grass to what enterprise. Selling yielding bulls is pretty high value enterprise so that we can sell that grass to those bulls quite effectively and know that we're going to have a good market for it. It's really important to be to be growing those bulls out, but we don't want them to be on rocket fuel, but we want them to be on good you know as as reasonable quality grasses we can get.
David Gooden:This is always that eternal compromise between running an efficient animal. We don't want them to have to be on you know some fancy moldy species or a big egg crop or whatever. We just want them. Sort of any raw grass and clover is basically the pasture, but it's as good as we can sort of get it without serving it up too much, because our cows really don't get that. I mean, they get a bit of it but they really get as rough a feed most of the time as we can give them.
Mark Ferguson:So you're you're gracing. Chart out 150 days. What's that looking like? You're feeling comfortable.
David Gooden:Well, yes and no is the short answer. Like, rolling average rainfall at the moment, 600 mils or 620 mils or something as of today, and last year in October we had 160 mils. So obviously, like 60 days out, that's going to fall off and so that'll bring us back down to our long-term average of sort of mid 400s, like our long out where our 30 year rolling average is 430 mils. You know, my grandfather sort of said it was a 450 mil or eight an inch rainfall, but the data sort of shows the last 20, 30 years which is what I've been in it and what the reality of the environment we're operating in now is is sort of with our actual rainfalls come back a bit and the variability has gone through the roof. So we need to deal with that. So, yeah, we're pulling levers to look at reducing, bringing our stocking rate back, because, yeah, basically the reality is that we won't have probably 160 mils in October this year, like really so, but we will be able to manipulate that through some irrigation. We're going to probably irrigate about 50. Maybe we've got we can irrigate up to 130 hectares, so we'll just that becomes this an economic decision in terms of what's the opportunity cost of the water and then how much feed are we going to grow? Are we going to be able to utilize that feed that time of year? For us, it's probably more important to have some good quality feed in the autumn. We can probably get through the winter, the late spring and into summer without high quality feed, but it would be really great to give ourselves some good quality feed in the autumn time to be able to wean on and just know that we've got like. If you're watering in early March, you're almost setting yourself up for carving paddocks in some ways like you've got like, although it's a fair way out, but you know that you're going to give yourself that bulk of feed to be able to carve down on. And also it's just a big lock.
David Gooden:We very with the seed stock, not that we really like to sort of hate cows and love grass, but we've got a big responsibility to our clients to keep our cow herd intact. That was a big decision that we made in 2019. To actually hand feed animals sort of broke a lot of the RCS rules as such, but we were that our desire to want to keep this stud ticking along and progress the genetics trumped the desire not to hand feed. So we actually conform and fed animals for 180 days, which was, yeah, it was an interesting decision and economically, yeah, it costs us sort of $20,000 to do it, which, yeah, in the scheme of things is not a lot, but for us it was a big decision to do, realising the value of the herd. At that time we wasn't going to be a decision that we wanted to make, so we decided to keep feeding. But, yeah, we interested to see what happens.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, I guess seed stocks. Yeah, you sort of locked into maintaining the core, like you can only get it down as lean as to a point. You have to have something to rebuild from and I guess that's the. I mean, no that great, I'm not sure who quoted it, but yeah, keeping the year of the drought to the year of the drought, whatever, I try not to have. One event that ends up cost like taking a three or four years to recover from, is which it would if you got too light in a seed stock business.
David Gooden:Although genetically, it was a great thing because we basically bell shaped curve and cut the bottom of it off, so that progressed as forward, although it was expensive in some ways, like it was actually the quality of the animals that we kept. So we and that was the beauty about having some data on those animals so we had the winning ratios of our cows, we had all the EBVs, we were structurally assessing everything, we'd pre-test them all, and so we really were making decisions on every animal. We kept to jump through all these different hoops to stay in the herd, which was really great, and in some ways we should probably do that every year. But rather than sort of oh, now she'll be right, look. Sort of look, it's just we've got to be putting that pressure on.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, and I think this I reckon that's a really valid point.
Mark Ferguson:at the moment there's like, I guess the value of EID in the sheep game is not always very clear, but in years like this, if you could all those people that have missions, they're, they're, they're flocks pretty well, and or herds in the case of cattle, yeah, if you've got some data, you're in much better position to make some calls. Now some sheep are going to have to go to to match that stocking road down, and if you're either going to do it through the draft or through some random guesses, or you're going to do it on data and the people who've done the work, I suppose only a few years, are going to be in a position that they can actually do it on information.
Mark Ferguson:I think that's a massive opportunity at the moment to to play the bell curve a bit. Get rid of those a few, of those ones that you've been carrying because you needed numbers but in reality they're not your high performers. Anything else we need to cover.
David Gooden:I think one of the points I really liked it where you'd write that yeah I heard come up in another in one of your earlier podcasts was around the listening to Corrigan made it about the collection of data and you know we're big advocates of, of collecting that data, the phenotypic data, and then also we're using genomics in all with all our animals and, yeah, I think it's really important to respect that. The cost associated with doing that, like we're birthwiring every calf, we're taking all the measurements of, of, of, of learning weights, mature cow weights, structurally assessing them all that type of thing, which does take sort of some time and effort. So, yeah, we really big believers in that and it'd be great if, as an industry, if that was taken on more. I know, a few years ago I think there was 70,000, it must have been the 2019, 2018 crop calves there was 70,000 calves registered in Angus breed and there was only 12,000 mature cow weights and, like, for us, that's just just not good enough to as a if we're really genuinely wanting to.
David Gooden:It's an important trait. We need to be measuring it as a breed, we need to be doing better than that and out of those 12,000 records, I'll probably, you know two or three studs are probably five or 6,000 of those cows. So there's, like you know, we don't add much to it, but we know that we're we're measuring every cow every year, but it's still, yeah, there's a lot of animals that obviously aren't and that I don't. Yeah, without wanting to pull down the Angus Society, it's just, it's something that I think we've got to be more mindful of and you know it gets back down to that you can't manage what you don't measure. Yeah, 100%.
Mark Ferguson:I think it doesn't matter whether you're breeding ever to material animal. I think terminal animals can probably give them a. Give them a the day off from conditions going on a mature cow like it's really. It's about growth in those, whether that's the terminal shape or terminal cattle breed, but definitely anything that wants to be maternal or is pretending it's maternal in, whether, whatever breed it is, whatever species it is.
Mark Ferguson:We have to be measuring that mature white and that mature condition score. I think there's critical things that we need to really hone in because we've yeah, we've got to spend more time, spend some time actually massive variation I suppose We've seen. I mean, if you look at 400 day weight in the, every kilo that we've lifted 400 day weight, we've got a direct kilo lift in mature cow weight in the Angus breed. So that to me is a bit of a lumbel, as I reckon, while bending the growth curve is sort of the Holy Grail and talked a lot about, there's bugger, all evidence that's actually happening on a breed level. I know that's different on individuals that actually are doing it and working on it, but same as you've just said, you can't.
David Gooden:There's no hope of changing if you're not measuring it and I think that's the thing, because we do have those tools to do it. It's just a matter of doing it, and we probably really don't have the license to just pick and choose the tools we want to use. If we're going to be taking on EBVs, we've got to be taking them on as the whole and getting the most out of it. I think, yeah, that's it.
Mark Ferguson:It is very risky when you're just picking trees which ones you want to measure and not do the whole thing. We've just been looking at ram catalog this morning and going through and you're sort of trying to pick out your size to retain and just looking across 20 trades plus some visuals and it's very hard to be good in all those boxes. But that's kind of what I think. If you want to have a license to breed animals, you have to have that as your focus to optimise them across a lot of trades you own to those people who are trusting you to breed their genetics for you. You have to work on all of the aspects rather than just bits of you choose or that. Yeah, because it's not real. I think, as you say, it's a great way to turn grass into money as C-Stock Productions. So you have to do the work to sort of validate it.
David Gooden:Yeah, and we take that responsibility seriously, like in terms of that's why we have set a direction probably a different direction from our C-Stock business to be solely focused on those maternal traits. I've had this argument with other guys before as well. They sort of get talking to them and say, oh yeah, our cows are too big, we want to bring our mature cow weight down. And then they come to your place and they say, oh, but your bulls are too small. And it's like well, surprise, surprise, but that's big bulls breed big cows. And then the next part of the conversation might be oh well, we're looking for a heifer bull. And it's like well, what do you do? You're self-replacing. And it's, oh yeah, no, we keep all our heifers. And it's like well, how do you know that the bull that was plus six, that you put over your seven-year-old cow, that carved out all right, is not going to have a heifer and she's going to try and have a 40 kilo calf as a heifer. So it just asks you those simple questions.
David Gooden:I think getting that information out in the industry is really important. So, yeah, I mean for us we really focus ourselves on maternal. The beauty of the Angus breed at the moment is you can still go all black and be terminal. You wouldn't have to look through too many bulls so catalogues to find some big terminal bulls, which would be great in a lot of ways. Angus has done a great job trying to create that market and that premium, which is which is really good in a lot of ways. But I think we've got to be really mindful of it, like from our grazing management perspective, business management perspective, we're always talking about the benefits of diversity and then you know we're really running our main enterprise as single species, single breed. So we've got to be a little bit careful with how we, you know the yeah, the diversity doesn't just come in and wipe you out. Yeah, all the lack of it, yeah.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. No, it's been a fantastic chat, michael. I really enjoyed that and I'm sure that was as well. But yeah, thanks very much for your time today to share your experiences. And yarn about optimizing breeding is nothing I like talking about, more than trying to work at how you optimize it. I don't think we neither is pretending to have all the answers. It's about that journey and learning and enjoying that journey. I suppose, as you said earlier in the interview, it's about enjoying the process as much as the destination, and definitely echo that.
David Gooden:Yeah, no, I appreciate the opportunity, Mark, to chat, and it is exactly that is that we're never going to get to that perfect cow in a lot of ways. But that's the beauty, that's why I get out of bed in a lot of ways is to know that the ends in sight, but it's not. We don't actually have to worry about the day when we get there. I suppose it will always be something else that we can go on and look at pushing further, which is really exciting.
Mark Ferguson:Yeah, exactly, excellent, thanks, mate, Too easy Cheers.
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