LEANNE AND GARRY HALL have been thrown an agistment lifeline that will guarantee at least another month of feed for 280 heifers at the heart of their breeding herd.
With their farm near Warren in NSW devastated by drought they have been desperately hunting agistment to offset the crippling cost of feedlotting their 12-month-old cattle.
A call from a cropper north of Condobolin was the best one the couple have had in a long time.
“He had been overseas and when he came back and saw he had a failed crop his first thought was to find someone looking for agistment,” Garry said.
“He switched on his computer and the first thing he saw was the mailout from Te Mania Angus about us so he picked the phone up and called,” he said.
“He has about 8000 acres of crop and I reckon it will be good for at least a month, and hopefully a week or two beyond that, but after that we will be looking for another paddock.”
Garry said the agistment was 250km from their property but after they did all the sums it was still a better deal to truck the cattle there and back than keep paying a feedlot.
“Being a failed crop means just that, in some places it is pretty thin and once the flag leaf drops there will only be the stalk and grain, so they are chewing through it pretty quickly,” Garry added.
He is heading over there tomorrow to vaccinate the cows and put his Team Te Mania bulls into the herd to get his joining program underway.
Garry said there was a bit of serendipity in the deal – the property owner has been a Te Mania Angus bull buyer over the years.
“So he’ll get to check out some of the latest genetics when our Team bulls arrive,” he said.
