Herefords Australia National Youth Expo was held at Cootamundra Showground last weekend. 

About 150 young people attended the weekend with lectures on the Saturday as well as some judging and then on the Sunday it was time to parade their prepared cattle and further judging. 

This year Glenwarrah was well represented with Sugarloaf Creek Jewell U174, exhibited by Mackinley Klippel, sired by Glenwarrah Marshall R276, taking our Junior and Grand Champion Female. 

The heifer that came third in the class to her was Glenwarrah Miss Melissa U404 owned by Lily Gavenlock of Maitland.

This year due to tough seasonal conditions experienced by us and most of our clients we opted to do something we have never done before. We sold our 2018 drop of Angus and Hereford weaner heifers for export to Russia (yes the country).

The sale and shipment was handled by Landmark International and required heifers of outstanding quality to be used for breeding purposes.

In a normal season we would have kept a lot of the heifers but due to the conditions and also the uncertainty as to what the season was going to send our way we decided to export the majority of the drop of heifers from 2018.

The heifers sold to Russia had to be within a weight range of 260-360 kgs empty and of good quality and type. They were inspected once here on the property and then trucked to Portland in Victoria to go into a quarantine situation before leaving Australia. They were all inspected again and examined, including blood tests, before being shipped to Russia (with Love).

It would have been great to keep them here in Australia, but hopefully we can get some feedback as to their breeding quality and perhaps help open the Australian market to more Northern Hempishere buyers for our seed stock.

Recently Steve spent a very enjoyable morning with David Strelitz touring around his Uralla properties. David and son Gavin are repeat Brooksby Angus bulls buyers so it was a great opportunity to catch up, have a look around and see what sort of job the bulls are doing for them. It is also good opportunity to get to know them and their operation a bit better.

It turns out that David grew up in the Uralla area. As a young man he went to Moree for 15 years for work and then returned in 1975 to manage ‘Goldsworth’ at Uralla for Mr Henry Belfield. Two years later, during the cattle crash, Mr Belfield sold ‘Goldsworth’ to David.

This was the start to a very successful company Dasban P/L which now owns a number of properties in the Uralla area including ‘Goldsworth’ and ‘Underwood’.

Steve’s comment on the day when he arrived home was:

 I was extremely impressed with their management practices and the standard of their cattle.

Steve was ‘chuffed’ to learn that David and Gavin seem to be happy with the job the Brooksby Angus bulls are doing for their herd.