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Fertility, structural soundness and market versatility underpin Greenup-Eidsvold breeding objectives. Greenup Santa Gertrudis acquired the Eidsvold Station Stud Herd as their breeding objectives, such as fertility, constitution, structural soundness and weight gain and its supreme reputation for commercial performance are completely in line with the traits that we consider to be relevant to both stud and commercial cattlemen that are producing bulls and carcase animals for the real world and real grazing conditions. Our policy is to provide you with bulls that are guaranteed for fertility. All the bulls are soundness evaluated, and semen-morphology tested. This is a practice we use every year with our stud and commercial sires, and in conjunction with our strict standards for cows, you can be assured in the breeding soundness of your Greenup bulls. Greenup Pty Ltd runs 2000 Santa Gertrudis cattle on Ironbark forest-country west of Kingaroy (South Burnett) and 3500 head in the North Burnett, which includes 1000 classified cows and 500-700 commercial cows (seasonally determined). The studs sell around 400 bulls annually, via Auction and Paddock Sales. They conduct two sales annually, one in August at Eidsvold, cataloguing 80 bulls and the other on-property at Cardowan in September, auctioning 60 bulls. The reminder of the bulls are sold throughout Australia to private clients. All cattle are bred with a commercial focus and an eye on what makes a business profitable. Rick worked on extensive commercial cattle properties in the Kimberley’s, Barkly Tablelands and Central Queensland. This foundation provides him with a strong commercial focus that complements the expertise gained from working in the family operation. Rick is on the Santa Gertrudis Breed Development Committee. Alice worked for the Queensland Department of Primary Industries as a Beef Extension Officer for eight years, providing and developing training products for beef producers on topics such as breeding and genetics, marketing, nutrition and business management. She was a Director’s of Beef Australia, which coordinates the triennial Beef Expo in Rockhampton Rick and Alice hope to help your business prosper by working with you and sharing ideas to breed cattle that perform for your bottom line. "We want to develop and enhance the beef industry by creating partnerships with like minded producers and encouraging young players, like ourselves, to believe in the future of rural industry and to succeed." Rick & Alice Greenup Cardowan is predominantly Ironbark-Granite country and is suited to breeding, however it is very light country which naturally selects for efficient, easy-doing cows. Eidsvold cows are run on three breeder blocks, The Station, Barrule & Boolgal. All the breeder country is open forest spear grass country, with some brigalow and softwood scrub at Barrule. The breeder management is the same for both studs as we believe that the pressure to select for fertile, easy doing cattle with strong constitutions must be maintained under all circumstances The sires are vet-tested every year prior to mating for:
As bull longevity increases the cost per calf decreases, so structural correctness and fertility are our first priority, with carcase traits a close second.
The bulls are put out with the cows at the start of December for a twelve week mating period. Cows calve unassisted.
Cows are preg-tested in May-June and the PTEs are sold.
Because of our late calving date and very low quality pastures it is difficult to get heifers up to weight for yearling mating, while keeping costs low so the majority of our females are not bred until they are two years old.
Heifers and PTIC cows are culled at weaning for the following traits:
This culling program is producing bulls with sheaths that demonstrate excellent form and function.
Our goal at Greenup Pty Ltd is to breed bulls and be profitable. Traditional stud systems of bull breeding, growing, fattening and showing have sometimes made it difficult for studs to be as profitable as their commercial counterparts. The traditional systems also works against our goal of breeding easy-doing bulls that will breed easy-doing cows for commercial producers. We have found our profitability can be improved by keeping our costs down. The main areas of cost cutting are:
Areas that we believe should not be cut back to save costs are:
We expect that this combination of cost saving strategies and genetic improvement will produce bulls with the genes that will perform, at a fair price.
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