Lord Pastoral on building their business

For Ardie and Kacie Lord and their son Nikko, it was about instilling 'outside the box' thinking when the family purchased their first 8093 hectare property, Sutherland at Richmond, 35 years ago.

Since then, the business has grown substantially to now operate six properties across 279,228 hectares of land throughout Queensland.

After purchasing Sutherland, Ardie - at just 19 years of age - had been determined to figure out how he could capitalise on what land he had available to him.

"I think that's how our regenerative agriculture push started because they started so small, and really needed to squeeze the lemon to get ahead," Nikko said.

"My parents very quickly learnt it was probably less about the cattle and more about managing the grass and soils in order to get the land healthier. The majority of our time as famers, we will be in light to dry times where healthy country shines from minimal rainfall.

"That's what has set us up to be where we are today and why we have such a strong belief of regenerative grazing practices."

Nikko and his wife Jade are now based at Lord Pastoral's Woodstock Station, a 202,342 hectare property situated between Richmond and Croydon.

"Across our properties we run about 20,000 head of Brahman-cross cattle, including 9000 breeders up here in the forest country at Woodstock," he said.

Having largely catered to the export market over the last 10 years, Nikko said the recent improved seasons have seen a herd rebuild start, pushing them to trade more into the Australian feedlot market.

"Through the prolonged dry period, our turn-off best suited the live export market. Since some recent improved seasons have created a significant increase in domestic demand, we've shifted our supply to this market," he said.

"The types of cattle play a part in our decision making. Our softer cattle we'll generally draft up and send down south and the higher Brahman content animals will go live export, although at the moment everything is going down south."

When it comes to breeding, the Lords have a strict culling regime in place, selecting their cattle heavily based on fertility and temperament.

"We just want cows that under tough conditions want to get back into calf again," he said.

"For us to do that we've got to have sufficient grass quality and quantity in front of them to hold their plain of nutrition."

Nikko has attributed much of their success in the past 10 years to a mix of good grazing land management and low stress stock handling practices.

"Anybody can be a farmer in the good times, but it's about how you prepare yourself for the tough times that defines management," he said.

"Being able to keep our country healthy and maximise stock days per hectare per 100mm of rain that we receive is crucial, so for any rain we do get our country is able to flourish from it.

"We've also focused very heavily on low stress stock handling ever since Bud Williams came to Australia."

Nikko has come to understand very well the important link animal production shares with overall animal nutrition, grazing land management, and herd psychology.

He can still remember sitting in the room as a kid with American stock handling expert Bud Williams when he came out to visit Sutherland for a stock workshop.

"Getting the animals' minds right through low stress stock handling techniques is very much part of our vision with how we want to operate with fat, happy, healthy cattle," he said.

"Watching the cattle I think is one of the most important things, observing their dung to manage nutrition, and their behaviour in the paddock- whether they're happy or upset and why."

Since the Lords purchased Woodstock two years ago, their focus has been on educating cattle and resting country to stimulate grass growth.

"At Woodstock we have focused on destocking, wet season spelling and getting our stocking rate to carrying capacity back into balance. Fortunately, with market and seasonal hindsight, this property was 150 per cent stocked when we bought it and we've been busily destocking in order to rest some country with wet season spelling," Nikko said.

"It's been interesting coming up here and picking up a herd of cattle that have been on the other end of the pendulum and had very little handling.

"I know my staff would be quite happy to never see another clean-skin bull or hot spayed cow again. It makes life a lot more enjoyable when you're not getting bashed up every day."

The Lords have implemented rotational grazing and wet season spelling across all of their properties, although Nikko admits it can be quite a challenge in the northern country.

"There are three principles that guide us; plan, monitor and manage, match stocking rate to carrying capacity and rest" he said.

"Due to terrain and infrastructure we're not able to manage rotations as well in the north here because we don't have that sort of control, but Sutherland has been rested and rotated pretty heavily for 30 years and there's a very impressive mix of species that have emerged."

"At Woodstock we have just focused on improving waters, stocking conservatively, resting country, and managing the psychology of the livestock to still get that impact but in a more plausible way."

Feed budgeting is another tool the Lords have adopted to accurately manage stocking rates throughout the year.

Nikko believes grass is a "piggy bank".

"So it makes sense for us to budget and plan early on after the wet season to know what we have for the year. This enormously valuable to our business," he said.

"From a visual estimate, we measure how many stock days there are per hectare in each paddock.

"Initially, estimating feed for one animal for one day can be quite loose, but very quickly once a mob of cattle have left a paddock and you've got actuals on what they ate, you can re-calibrate yourself quickly."

Nikko said he feels confident in his ability to teach his staff to be within 10-20 per cent after as little as three to four paddock moves.

"As we know, mother nature is at her best in Australia and she's continuously throwing new hurdles at us, so you have to be really on point with monitoring and recalibrating yourself throughout the year with what available feed you have," he said.

"The thing with anything intensive is that your management has to be better for it. You certainly need to constantly pay attention to what's going on. As much as you try to amplify your impact, you can also amplify your stuff ups."

Nikko will soon he heading to Cloncurry to share the Lord Pastoral journey with fellow peers at the upcoming BeefUp forum later this month.

"I am excited, although I don't know what to expect. For myself I am a strong believer in regenerative ag and I think the next generation is too, so I believe it is important to be there waving the flag."

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