DARYL Mosley was quietly chuffed in Emerald this morning after taking out the grand champion pen at the weaner and feeder sale – only three years after he got into the grazing game.
Traditionally growing cotton and grains on his property Kingower, 20km out of Emerald, Daryl and wife Gayle went into cattle three years ago for a new challenge.
The winning pen of 20 Brangus feeder steers came to the Mosley’s 12 months ago at about 270kg each, and were sold today for 309c/kg weighing more than 500kg each.
“They’re local cattle… they’ve been on sorghum stubble since we first bought them and they’ve gone really well,” Daryl said.
“It was a great result today, we were looking at maybe 285 (c/kg) or something like that, so it was a good result.”
A gem miner his whole life, Daryl said getting into the cattle game did not come without its challenges.
“I’ve only been doing grazing for three years and I’m still involved from the mining sector, we’re open cut commercial sapphire miners out at the Gemfields which I’ve done all my life,” he said.
“I guess I just wanted to get into it (grazing), I love the land.
“We’ve been fortunate that our daughter’s partner is from a cattle country out Alpha way, and he’s been good help.
“We’ve had some pretty interesting events - in the first muster we had 180 cattle gone through the neighbours, and into the next neighbours.
“There was helicopters and it was just total mayhem. But you can only learn from that.”
The cattle are keeping Daryl busy, and he said he is enjoying the challenge.
“We’re a mixed farm, we’ve got irrigation country and dryland cultivation and we run about 2500 acres of grazing country and we have a feeding program also,” he said.
“We’re pretty dry on the ground but with the irrigation we can supplement feeds and we grow grains and we crack our own grain so we’re able to help them out that way.
“We bale our own feed, so we’re pretty well self-sufficient. We just do it for ourselves, we’re not commercial.
“It’s just to drought proof I suppose so we can run steady, even business without too much variation.”
The Mosley’s bought in 140 feeders to the sale, and Daryl said he was hoping to leave with some weaners in tow.