Glenavon Updates Nov 2024
Tailored genetics, bull sale wrapup and key sire lines driving profitability, we’ve covered it all in our November Newsletter
Welcome to our spring newsletter! Spring is a wonderful yet busy time of year here at Glenavon and whilst our season has been uncomfortable (hot and dry resulting in below average pasture growth) livestock performance has been excellent, paving the way for a successful cattle joining and exceptional lambing percentages. Following our bull criteria on joining in larger mobs as shared at our Longevity Workshop back in May, we have had very few breakdowns again this year. All the bulls will be out by mid Nov as per our 6-7 week joining, allowing us to preg test and date pregnancies around Christmas and early January. The dry weather was ideal for our Sept/Oct AI & ET programs (the largest in our history) and as I write here in early Nov we are expecting a good month of rainfall coming up (fingers crossed). Given we run a high stocking rate we are comfortable being uncomfortable most of the time, it comes with the territory! We strongly believe that cattle run under high stocking rates and with tight joining periods drives significant efficiency for you the producer as evidenced up by our own benchmarking data.
We continually strive and innovate to identify the genetics that outperform in this environment and pass them onto our clients.
Our family are well. We took a couple of weeks break in Aug after the sale in the NT on a family road trip and I took an extra week to hike and camp on the Larapinta trail. We will spend our Christmas at Wagga (my family) as is the custom every second year. We wish you and your family a wonderful run into the end of the year and a nice break over Christmas. This newsletter is just sharing what we have been up in in recent months, feel free to suggest to us any topic for inclusion in future newsletters or on farm workshops that we host in coming years.
Richard Post
Sale Recap
August 2024 marked our 40th on property bull sale. 125 bulls sold to a top of $26,000 to AJM Pastoral QLD, to average just over $8,000, and 124 yearling heifers averaged $1646. We are very pleased with this result and the value this presented for our clients. Their ongoing support of our program allows us to do what we do. 2025 will see an elite offering of 150 Bulls and 150 heifers again on Mon Aug 4.
WORLD ANGUS FORUM
We are proud to be sponsoring the World Angus Forum held here in Australia in May 2025 Full credit to the Angus Australia team for their planning and preparation. We will be attending many events over this time including the Teys Australia Angus Shoot-Out awards dinner in Tamworth on May 2nd (we have entered 4 teams in the steer trial), the AngusEXPO in Tamworth on May 3- 4, and the World Angus Forum in Brisbane May 7th & 8th. In addition I will join the post conference tour to central and western QLD May 9th to 16th. We encourage all angus producers to join whatever events they can. We cannot wait to repay the hospitality and host some US Angus producers here at Glenavon that have provided us with Genetics and become friends from our US trips over the years.
STEER COMP
Glenavon Steers entered into the Teys Angus Shoot-out feedlot trial. With the top 40% of our steers already sold, this mid section of our steer drop is a great reflection of our herd and we look forward to tracking their performance.
SAVE THE DATE – 41ST ANNUAL SALE
MONDAY 4TH AUGUST 2025
We have an elite offering of 150 Bulls and 150 heifers again on Mon Aug 4 2025. We expect to offer around 25 sons each of RR Endeavour and Tehama Patriach, along with around 10-15 sons each from Beast Mode son Clunie Range Plantation and Tivoli Paratrooper S15 plus progeny of outstanding home bred sons of Sydgen Enhance, Rennylea Intensity L519 & N479 and Dunoon R788 and R760. The first of our Sterling Pacific sons will be offered as yearlings. We will have an open day on Sat Aug 2nd (2 days prior to the sale) and we invite private inspections anytime. Note for those travelling, please join us at the Black tie Guyra snow ball on the evening of our open day on Sat Aug 2nd 2025!
AI and ET
The dry start to spring whilst not great for our pasture budget, was ideal for AI & ET. We AI’d 400 stud females and in addition implanted 132 embryo’s (a record for us), which due to a successful flush, nearly all were fresh . Donor cows are selected for their progeny performance, longevity pedigree and elite structure. The bulls used in this years AI & ET joining reflect our relentless search and travels globally for the best genetics to share with our clients. Key sirelines this years joining were US bull T/D Doc Ryan 049 (sold for US$525,000 in March 2021), Landfall Signature S1755 (sold for $240,000 in March 2023), Sterling Pacific 904 and Booroomooka New Ground T275 (we purchased in Aug 2024 for $40,000). Importantly, all new genetics have been thoroughly researched and we have
inspected in the flesh ourselves. We look forward to sharing these genetics with our clients in coming years which will be the bull sales in 2026-27. Thanks to our Glenavon team and in particular our trusted partners in AI & ET Bovine Breeders being Nathan, Erika and Udo.
LAMB MARKING
The mild and dry start to spring provided ideal lambing conditions as evidenced by marking percentages >160% in late Oct. Our Prime lamb operation continues to decrease, as we scale up our Stud and commercial cattle numbers in their place. This is a purely financial decision due to the relatively high cost of production of our sheep enterprise when compared to our commercial cattle herd which sits around $2kg/lwt ($2.17 in FY23-24).
UNI DAY
We had the pleasure of hoisting 150 UNE students studying animal production systems in April and May. We shared our benchmarking data on each of our enterprises, along with pasture and grazing management, genetic selection, kill data and why we do what we do. A really great bunch, the future of the industry is bright.
ON FARM IMPROVEMENTS
Over the past 12months we have continued to upgrade on farm infrastructure in order to improve efficiency and handle our shift toward larger mobs. This includes fencing laneways to yards, continually splitting paddocks with a single hotwire, ripping in more poly pipe and installing troughs and to drive better grazing management and rotations. We continue to experiment with planting new clean up crops and multispecies pastures as part of our plan to renovate underperforming country. Tree Planting is something we chip away at most years and we have 2000 trees and shrubs to be planted this November here at Glenavon. This brings the total to around 20,000 since we took over in Jan 2016
Beef Week
Prue and I had a wonderful week at Beef 24 in May. Great to see many of our clients and spend time with industry leaders talking all things beef including genetics, tech, markets and carbon. A special thankyou to board member Jess Webb for all her work behind the scenes. I could not recommend the event more highly, bring on Beef 2027!