PERHAPS it was the fact he was the only bull calf among eight sisters, maybe it’s his lineage back to leading North American genetics or it could be the fact his owners speak to him as if he were a person.
The 22-month-old Red Angus bull – Goonoo 26P Jose Carreras, led by Ryan Morris, Tamworth – was named supreme beef exhibit at the 2015 North Coast National in Lismore on Saturday was 832 kilograms of pure charisma.
That superb temperament was possibly what gave him an edge in a competitive line-up featuring the cream of stud exhibits across an incredible 19 breeds from throughout Northern NSW and into Queensland.
The Lismore show’s beef competitions lay claim to being the largest in regional NSW and this year saw 200 head in the stud ring and 80 led steers on show.
Graham and Sandy Jordan’s Goonoo Red Angus at Tamworth took home the supreme title.
“He has had that presence from day one,” Mr Jordan said.
Temperament has always been a major breeding aim at Goonoo, with the Jordans considering it paramount for the commercial producer.
“It has far more to do with profits than just the benefits of being able to handle cattle,” Mr Jordan said.
“We cull so strictly on temperament and we handle gently, we just poke around the cattle, and even though people think we’re half mad we talk to them – it keeps them calm.”
Jose, which was also the junior Red Angus champion at the Royal Queensland Show this year, now has the 2016 Sydney Royal in his sights.
Meanwhile, top led steer honours went to Inverell’s David King, “Yallembie”, courtesy of a 520kg Murray Grey-cross that made a whopping $7.90 a kilogram dressed to the Northern Co-operative Meat Company at Casino in the following auction.
Champion carcase was a Limousin-cross from Travis Luscombe and Alison McCabe’s Luscombe Show Steers and Livestock at Toowoomba, Qld, exhibited in partnership with the Bayliss family at Armidale.
It sold for $6/kg (dwt) to Atron Enterprises.
Shan Goodwin
Journalist for The Land on the North Coast.
Journalist for The Land on the North Coast.
