Weeran Angus stud principals Alec and Jo Moore, Byaduk, are excited about the future after a challenging 2023.
The excitement is fueled by new genetics, new staff and the promise genomics offers for future progress.
"I'm very excited about the opportunity we've got with our middle daughter [Lucy] coming home to work on the farm," Mr Moore said.
"She has spent five years working with Rabobank, which is ideal training."
He said the staff, their skills and how they worked together was critical to the farm operation.
He said Lucy was employed as a general farmhand but had a skillset that included marketing, social media and information technology.
In 2023 the Moores held their 51st bull sale in 30 years of breeding bulls.
The stud has been performance recording for many years to develop a bull selling program of about 250 bulls annually through auction and private treaty.
The autumn-calving herd is a smaller herd of mainly Herd Book Registered (HBR) females, while the spring herd is larger and has a higher percentage of Angus Performance Registered (APR) cattle.
Mr Moore said the spring herd would become the dominant herd in the future, while the autumn herd would provide leading-edge bulls that were a little-bit older and capable, which could be used in the stud for natural matings.
The farm comprises about 750 females and will increase to about 800 calving a year.
The property also carries 3000 mature-aged composite ewes for prime lamb production.
Mr Moore said June 2023 was the wettest in 60 years and made for a wet start to the winter.
However, he said the season dried out and the balance of winter and early spring was "quite good" with good-quality hay cut a bit earlier than normal that didn't get wet.
"Once we got it stacked it hasn't stopped raining and we are getting fantastic regrowth and quality feed," he said.
Mr Moore said Weeran started selling bulls in 1990 and in the past 10-15 years had "raised the bar and done the job even better".
He said Stock & Land Beef Week was a good place to expose their genetics to its clientele.
He said it was also a good dress rehearsal for the Weeran team and the animals to get them used to crowds, getting drafted, washed and vet inspected.
Mrs Moore said Weeran conducted its own field day in spring, which had worked extremely well.
She said field days were important for people to inspect bulls and then bid online if they chose not to attend sales in person.
She said the online presence also widened the catchment for interest in the bulls to include interstate breeders and those as far away as East Gippsland.
Mr Moore said spring calving was becoming a big part of cattle breeding in western Victoria.
"It has eclipsed the autumn numbers now," he said.
"It requires slightly-different management techniques to really fly.
"I think we are getting better at running those younger and more-immature calves through the autumn and winter."
He said they had also identified a previously-unknown copper deficiency in the herd that had since been treated.
He said since the treatment the herd had never looked as healthy and it had made a huge difference to the quality of their stock.
Mr Moore said about one-third of the stud's clients sold calves in the weaner sales while the balance grew their steers out to feedlot-entry weight or for sale to grass fatteners.
Mrs Moore said it was exciting that one client who had been buying Weeran bulls since 1995 was awarded best-presented pen of steers at the Hamilton weaner sales.
"The following day the heaviest pen at the sale was one of our clients," she said.
"We make sure we keep in touch with clients at the sale."
Mr Moore said the market and confidence had changed markedly since last spring when it was "pretty dull".
"The weaner sales now are about 100 cents a kilogram better, which is $350 a head better," he said.
"We went from the dearest meat in the world to the cheapest and we are now starting to claw back some of that.
"If the seasons are right I think you'll see the job will be very strong again."
Notable sires introduced to the program with progeny include HBR sire Landfall Mainland Q494, bought in syndication with Bull Oak Well and Mandayen in 2021.
Mr Moore said Mainland was a New Ground son out of a Landfall Fearless female line.
He said the bull was a "super sound, brilliantly footed and structurally perfect, whose progeny are really eye catching and with good balanced data".
"We have used a lot of him and will continue to do so," he said.
A second sire was an APR bull, Connamara Twinhearts P64, a Twinhearts son bred by the Hill family, Connamara stud, Ruffy.
Mr Moore said the bull had "freakish" data including low birth and calving ease and provided a great outcross option.
"They are two bulls that we think will add some real value and influence in our program for years to come," he said.
A third sire was Dunoon Quambatook Q317, a son of Dunoon Numurkah and out of a Dunoon Beeac female.
Mr Moore said an existing sire, Witherswood Bronc, sired the top-priced bull last autumn and the dam of the top-priced bull had produced a calf by Mainland.
He said the spring program meant a "big wing" of cows that didn't need priority feeding could be shifted off, saving the better winter feed for lambing ewes and the younger cattle.
He said the autumn cattle needed to be kept on an upward trend right through, which in some seasons was hard to do.
He said the stud's future aims remained around calving ease and carcase traits, temperament and longevity.
"Longevity is something the breed needs to address - getting their females to have longer lives - and to maintain high fertility," he said.
Weeran, with Dick Whale of Independent Breeding & Marketing Services, has introduced Igenity testing, a genomic program operated by Neogen that allows testing of hard-to-measure traits.
The lgenity Beef Profile was a tool for in-herd analysis and provided commercial producers with a ranking from 1-10 for 16 key production traits.
The reference population was US based and traits included stayability, Net Feed Intake or Residual Feed Intake, USDA Marbling and carcase tenderness.
Mr Whale said stayability, the ability of a female to remain in the herd until at least six years of age, was the most-important trait.
