Buyers were quick to take advantage of the quality line of cattle showcased through the CQLX sale ring in this year's National Braford Sale.
The sale generated interest from far and wide, with an offering of 141 bulls and 11 registered females from more than 20 different studs.
It was bid card number 22, belonging to Ashley and Colleen Murray, Richmond, that could be heard over the speaker multiple times throughout the day, as the pair collected their draft of cattle.
The Murrays were by far the largest volume buyers at the conclusion of the sale, and managed to secure a team of 22 bulls for an average of $7136.
"We thought we'd be scratching to get 16 bulls, which is what we had initially planned to get," Mr Murray said.
"We went pretty hard at the start, but there were some good bulls there at the end we would have bid on had we known it was going to trail off a bit later in the day."
This was the Murrays' second year attending the sale, returning after purchasing 13 bulls the previous year.
"We definitely noticed a big improvement this year and were stoked to see the quality of cattle that passed through the ring. More and more are starting to get keen with getting morphology results on bulls too which is great," Mr Murray said.
The Murrays are based at Oban Station, a 24,281 hectare (60,000 acres) cattle property near Richmond, where they run a mixed breeding and fattening cattle operation in conjunction with their three other properties; Artesian Downs, Athlone Station and Rowen-Lynn.
Mrs Murray said breed statistics and the animal's overall structure play a big role in their decision making when selecting bulls for their type of country.
"We look at their statistics first to assess their genetics and then look at them structurally," she said.
"The animals can't be too soft for up there because it's too hot, and not have too much white.
"We pay a lot of attention to feet because of the distances the cattle have to travel on our properties up north."
Mr Murray said with the way the market has gone, he'll continue to chase the crossbred genetics.
"The boats have been pretty big for us in the past, hence we've ended up with a large core breeding herd that has a lot more Brahman content now, so we're trying to get the Braford back over them as quickly as we can," he said.
"Everywhere south is looking for crossbred cattle, the boats will still take these fellas if we go to Vietnam so we've still got the option of going the other way now too.
"Some of the bulls we purchased here will go to Athlone, and the rest will head to Oban. They'll have a couple of weeks to acclimatise before they go out to be put across our Braford cows."
Other cattle operators who managed to snag themselves a fair chunk of bulls in Monday's sale was Allambee Cattle Company, Galloway Grazing, and Tigrigie Cattle Co.
Allambee purchased eight bulls for a cracking average of $11,875.
Galloway Grazing purchased seven bulls for an average of $8142, and Tigrigie Cattle Co secured six bulls for an average of $13,166.
Happy with the overall sale, Mrs Murray credited the Braford Society and said it was good to see studs providing statistics on things like morphology for the progressiveness of the breed.
"The Braford society is trying to be progressive, people are doing morphology and homozygous polled testing and it's great to see," she said.
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