Most lifestylers purchase many different types of animals. Goats, horses, cattle, alpacas, llamas, sheep etc.

That’s great: that’s why you bought your lifestyle block in the first place. But how do you decide how to stock your property?

There are many options and one of those is to buy  cattle. Cattle come in many shapes and sizes. Big, small, quiet, wild, healthy, unhealthy, every colour in the rainbow, well bred, poorly bred, the list goes on.

You have to ask yourself some questions:

a) Do I want to make this a money making venture?

b) Do I just want animals to eat grass and keep my property tidy?

c) A mixture of both?

C sounds like a good option. An experienced livestock rep — from PGGWrightson of course — can point you in the right direction.

Your first step is to identify your land as being a wet farm, or a dry farm; steep or flat.

It’s important to know these things because if you have a very wet farm – and let’s face it  most of our country on the West Coast particularly, gets very wet — you need to farm it accordingly. 

You need to buy light, young cattle in the autumn (March, April, May), keep them for a year and onsell them.

What do I mean by young or light cattle? Weaners: Born in July, August, or September.   That would make them at most 8 months old.

Take them through the first winter as one year old cattle and sell them in March the following year.

By achieving this, the cattle you have sold as 18 month olds will not have destroyed your property in the second winter.

Another option is to rear calves on your property. This takes a lot of skill and dedication but it can be done – but it’s a whole other story.

A few sheep around can help your wet property. They can flatten out areas that have already been damaged.

If you are fortunate enough to have purchased a free draining property then your options are a little better.

You can buy weaners and take them through two winters. You can even  buy in one year old cattle (Aug/Sept) and sell the following year as two year olds (Aug/Sep/Oct). Still have a few sheep around to fix any damaged paddocks.

Summing up, you can make a few dollars out of cattle. You won’t get rich, but you will make enough to pay few farming expenses.

Next month we’ll talk about breeds and purchasing, see you then.