Tom Blakeley begins to his journey in the livestock industry at Colac feature weaner sales

His first ever pen of 19 self-bred Angus weaner steers was sold at Colac's Birregurra feature weaner sale.

The pen, with an average weight of 330kg, sold of for $1670 or 506c/kg, and Tom couldn't have been any happier with his first ever sale.

"I think the market is obviously not as strong as it was, this time last year," Mr Blakeley said.

"It probably had to have a bit of a correction, but to be honest I think we were pretty happy on the day with with how we went with the sale."

Mr Blakeley's family had grown up around horses, primarily to be used for polo.

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This led to a promising polo career as well - he has represented Victoria as a member of the state junior team and played in major tournaments across Victoria and the ACT.

It was a stint at Mount William Charolais that convinced him to get serious about cattle.

"We always had a few cattle here, which were a mixture of Shorthorns and Herefords and everything in between," he said.

"At school I was focusing more on on riding horses and playing polo and then I finished school in 2020 which was when I went away for about six months to Mount William in Willaura.

"I worked there for a few months and then came back from there and wanted to get our own cattle operation up and running a bit more seriously than what it was."

He was convinced a career step into livestock was for him, and it's been upwards and onwards since then.

"We sold up the mix of cattle we had, and then found ourselves a nice line of of Angus heifers that were preg-tested in calf for an autumn calf," he said.

"We started with 90 of those, then through the last 12 months, we bought a few lots mainly at Colac and we now we're at around 200 breeding females - all Angus."

There were many lessons learned for Mr Blakeley in the last year, especially when it came to Victoria's floods in the latter part of this year.

"We had 31 inches rainfall for the year, and generally the rule of farmers around here is we only work on about 24 or 25 inches of rainfall so... that provided a few challenges," he said.

"I like to learn as you go, and I pick up on different things in relation to joining times and managing cattle the right way through winter.

"Just figuring out that stuff as we go, rotating them around paddocks and getting them on pretty continuous, fresh pasture was always in my mind."

Mr Blakeley believes while there are vast differences between looking after horses compared to looking after cattle, a sense of loving animals remains the same.

"I guess there are similarities in the way that in both industries you're you're working with with animals and you're still handling livestock," he said

"It's important to keep that in your mind whether it be a horse or a cow, to be honest."

The property where Mr Blakeley lives at currently has 15 polo ponies and he still maintains a regular playing regime in the sport which works around his life as a farmer.

"The horses we have here have a bit of thoroughbred in them, and there are a few 'off the track' horses that we've transitioned to playing polo," he said.

While the young farmer believes a full time career in agriculture is his calling, he continues to dabble in his passion for polo.

"I'm very heavily involved with polo and play every weekend at this time of the year, which I really enjoy," he said.

He said there is a misconception on how big the horse industry is in Australia, and that's not taking into consideration the thoroughbred racing industry.

"Many don't know how big polo is until they get themselves involved in the industry," he said.

"They may probably not know it exists as a sport, but in reality, once you get involved in it, it is quite a big and exciting industry network in Australia."