00:00Music
00:12The Garden Station is in the East Macdonald Ranges.
00:17It's rugged, you could say.
00:20Very rugged country. It's rough.
00:22It's harder to manage than some places.
00:27Because of how rough it is, there's a lot of helicopter hours here.
00:31But then again, being harder to manage, it is also good.
00:35There's always a little bit of grass somewhere.
00:38You know, not very often you have to put cattle on adjustment in a very dry time.
00:41So it's a good place.
00:42The grass that we've got is sweet grass.
00:45It does a great job in putting the weight gains on cattle.
00:49You know, in a season like we're having at the moment,
00:51and steers can be putting on anything up to a kilo a day just on grass.
00:57Even better than that actually.
00:58I think they'll probably do up to one and a half kilos a day.
01:01Especially now the feed's dried off a little bit.
01:03It's got a bit of body about it.
01:05Music
01:15Droughtmaster's temperament is renowned to be a quieter animal.
01:20It's a good animal to handle.
01:23Loading the steers this morning, the steers to head to the market,
01:27or head to the abattoirs, sorry.
01:29It took them about...
01:31120 steers took about half an hour to load.
01:34They went straight up.
01:35They were really good.
01:37Quiet.
01:37Nothing.
01:38No one yelling down the backyard.
01:39No one slamming gates.
01:40It was all...
01:41Everything's done really quietly.
01:49In the herd, they've been...
01:51Browdy bulls have been great for us.
01:52We've been using them for 30, not quite 30 years now.
01:56The reason we use them here at the garden is because we're pretty undulating.
02:02We're right in the heart of the McDonnell Ranges.
02:04There's a lot of hills.
02:05They move out.
02:06They step out well.
02:07They move.
02:08You need them to cover plenty of ground.
02:09The bulls.
02:11You've got to remember all these steers that we're sending down to TFI,
02:15none of them have been in the feed lot.
02:16It's all on grass.
02:18It's...
02:18The whole lot of it's on grass.
02:19A lot of it is on buffle grass, and buffle grass is always a good thing for us
02:24because it...
02:25You don't need much rain for it to start...
02:29Jump into gear and start putting weight onto your steers.
02:40We averaged with our steers that went into TFI in South Australia to the abattoirs.
02:49Dead weight was 327 average.
02:51In the last probably 30 years we've gone from, you know, going from one single deck of cattle
02:58back to the house after you've finished mustering out and about, bringing weaners back to bringing,
03:03you know, sort of three and four, five decks back to the house in one hit.
03:16Typically, the drought master, being organic, grass fed, the docility, when they're handled well,
03:26helps with the grading and the performance of the cattle on an NSA grading.
03:31Well, what stands out about the drought master is they do probably, out of the boss indicus world,
03:39they probably grade better than most of them.
03:41Meat and fat colour are very good.
03:44Eye muscles, very good.
03:47Everything else with the science that the MSA requires generally hit the spot.
03:53Typically, being organic, the largest market's the USA, particularly for trim.
04:00Other cuts do go domestic and globally as well.
04:04But generally speaking, it's the US market.
04:16BUZZ FOR WEEK
04:22AND PLAY STONE
04:37We've been using Drought Masters for 30 years, they've stood the test of time, they've seen
04:43us through really good years and they've seen us through really bad years and we're still
04:49kicking goals, we're still moving forward, it's really good.
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