WHEN cotton grower Robert Gracie decided to return to the cattle market in 2013 as cows and calves were making a few hundred dollars, many people would have called him crazy.
But just four years on, the St George producer has established a successful beef operation using spare centre pivots to fatten weaners and cows on oats or forage crops.
Robert Gracie along with his wife Diane and parents Charlie and Lena Gracie operate the 4000 hectare property, Katoota, north of St George, along with 1800 hectares of Sunwater lease.
They currently have 300 hectares of chickpeas planted and recently finished their cotton harvest with averages of 12 bales per hectare.
In May 2013, about five years after selling their cattle herd to focus on cropping, Robert Gracie decided he wanted to better utilise two centre pivots which were growing pulse and wheat crops.
Mr Gracie asked GDL St George agent Anthony Hyland to help them rebuild their beef numbers by purchasing cattle with about $60,000 and establish a trading operation with the spare pivots.
At that time their financial reserve was surplus for the cattle prices and after their first purchase of 60 Droughtmaster cows and calves from Mitchell out of the Roma saleyards there was still funds left.
Now Mr Gracie has about 260 weaners and 260 cows and feeder steers on 122 hectares of irrigated oats and 150 cows and 70 first calf heifers in breeder country along the river.
Their operation is targeted at the cow market and the females are purchased weighing about 400kg to 450kg where they are put into an 80 day oats program and sold to meat processors, like Bindaree Beef, at a target weight of 550kg.
If the cow calves, it’s seen as a bonus and the Gracie family will fatten the weaner for the best market at the time.
The move back into beef has been so successful that the family now plan to install another two centre pivots.
“Just for feed on-cattle and for pulse crops,” Mr Gracie said.
“If the cattle market turns the wrong way we can still do our thing and keep our skin in the game.”
The family have now moved into breeding and have put Santa bulls into their base Brangus herd.
Mr Gracie said they did investigate a feedlot opportunity for their return to beef but found more benefits in the irrigation fattening.
“Originally we put the pivots in just to drought proof us really so that we had a crop or something to keep our permanent guys busy,” he said.
“We did try cotton but couldn't keep the water up to it properly (on the pivots), that’s when we decided to go into feeding cattle off of them which I think we have done pretty good out of them actually.
“The pivots are absolutely perfect for what we are doing now. At the moment where the cattle market is you can afford to spend a few dollars on oats and a bit of forage.”
Their return to the beef game was relatively seamless with water used from on farm storage and allocation and fences and troughs given minor adjustments.
GDL St George agent Anthony Hyland said the Gracie’s operation hadn’t come about with a flick of a switch, a lot of planning and budgeting had been undertaken.
“Like any business everything is calculated pretty well, we don’t just do it for the sake of doing it,” he said.
“The profit is in the buying but it has been volatile this last nine months and trying to get it right.
“If you have got feed in front of you, you know where you can be and where you cant be, I think that’s key.”