This year was the 25th anniversary of beef ring showing for Kingaroy’s Marilyn Hansen and Dean Rasmussen and they marked it in style.
Their 25-month-old, 998 kilogram bull, Shell-Dee Rolling Thunder was named supreme Murray Grey exhibit.
Their 90-breeder Shell-Dee Murray Grey stud has collected a swag of champion ribbons over the years but this was its first supreme title.
His owners said his big muscle pattern was clear from the start and combined with length of body and exceptional eye muscle area measurements - he scanned 141 square centimetres - the bull was always a star.
The couple cross Murray Greys with Brahmans for commercial heifer production.
Shell-Dee also bought a cow, with a calf by Rolling Thunder, to this year’s Ekka and she finished first in her class.
The line-up of Murray Greys - 58 head from 16 exhibitors - was high calibre, according to judge Greg Ball, Singleton, NSW.
He placed a powerful cow from David and Sally Taylor’s Baroona Park at Wellcamp in the top female spot.
Baroona Park Soraya, shown with her five-month-old heifer calf, was an animal “clearly capable of taking the breed forward in the right direction” according to Mr Ball.
Soraya is the daughter of a champion Baroona Park cow unbeaten in the Murray Grey show ring, Baroona Park Sarah.
“She is from a female line that goes back a long way, a bloodline that has proven itself really functional with good growth and fertility,” Mrs Taylor said.
Kym Carlton, from Boggabri, NSW, dominated the junior section collecting the female title with Carlinga Harbinger M39, a heifer the judge said typified the style of cattle the breed aimed at these days.