That’s a wrap! 2022 mustering season at Yarrie Station has come to a glorious end. We’ve put all our cattle through the yards, they are in great condition thanks to another reasonable wet season and a helping hand from the few downpours during May. What a blessing!
Although the work never stops around here we think its important to celebrate what we have achieved throughout this mammoth time of year. With a great team of people on the stock crew and countless others keeping us happy, healthy and fed we have managed to get 1 million acres (over Yarrie and Coongan Station) mustered, processed, trucked and let out in the last 6 months. That is in itself a mean feat!
However, we have also installed numerous new bores to utilise more areas of land by giving cattle access to water there, started some more of our young horses, had some new butchers jump on board to Outback Beef in Perth, opened up to more of our wonderful industry with a tour of the Kimberley which included visiting 3 other stations to learn about their innova tions and different operations, and the list goes on!
One of our greatest achievements this year has been winning the KPCA Livestock Handling Competition for the second year in a row! This event brought together 20 teams from stations across the Pilbara and Kim berley regions to showcase quality stockmanship and livestock handling skills.
The competition entails 3 stages, the first being what we call the ‘settling pen’, it is here, in teams of 3, we receive our cattle and work them in a yard to achieve settled cattle with good, responsive movement. We execute this by using a combination of different techniques that we have implemented in our weaner education program.
The second stage is the draft, we move our cattle through to a set of panels and gates that allows us to draft off the cattle we want to take with us to stage 3. We are looking for cattle that will be receptive to our movements but also in the right mind frame to un dertake obstacles, often we try to spot lead cows and nurture them. Where one goes, the rest will follow!
This brings us to stage 3, the obstacle course. As the name suggests, it involves a series of obstacles around a pen, the aim is to take our mob around it in a controlled manner. This year we came up against a tarp tunnel, walking them over panels on the ground, around hay bales and over a wooden plank bridge.
The judges are looking for quality stockmanship, specific livestock handling techniques, team work and safety to showcase a high level of knowledge and care for animal welfare. This is all shown through a course designed to replicate tasks we undertake each day on a cattle station.
Congratulations to the Yarrie team for demonstrating all this and much more! Hard work pays off, the trophy is now home for another year.
Henry, our southern farm manager, has been busy assessing our grazing management to enhance our pasture improvement plans and a long term soil health program. In conjunction with this, we have implemented small steps to slow the water down over the country to help regenerate special areas of the property.
Hay season will also soon be upon us with plenty of oats and rye grass filling the fields. The spring is always a beautiful time to see the cattle flourishing on the quality southern pastures.
We love that all of this goes into bringing you the very best beef, paddock right through to plate. Thank you for being a part of it!
Great story. Did Annabelle work in the NT?