Steers bred by Tony and Marg Killalea, at Wantagong NSW have taken out a major award in the 2021 Lardner Park Steel Trial.
The two-steer team entered by the Killaleas outperformed to win the Combined Weight Gain and Carcass Award.
The steer trial is unique in Australia as it is the only grass-based trial with cattle managed under independently controlled grazing conditions at Lardner Park, Warragul in Gippsland Victoria. 2021 was the 46th year the trial has run and 32 beef producers entered teams. The trial ran from early July to end of November 2021.
The trial measures weight gain over the five months and concludes with a final carcass assessment to meet a standard domestic trade 200 – 330 kg category.
Tony and Marg Killalea operate a pasture-based fattening system at Wantagong, east of Holbrook. The property has abundant water. A regular program of inputs and pasture over-sowings of forage oats/long season ryegrass bolsters the perennial pasture base.
“This system provides a very good winter-spring feed plane to trade up to 400 steers and over 100 heifers a year” said Marg. They also run 200 cross-bred cows utilising high performance sires and AI to access leading genetics, with the weaners slotting into steer finishing mobs.
“We selected our homebred steers to enter the trial in June of last year. The winning pair were sired by Shorthorn/Angus sire Sprys-W Blender N514 (Sire Angus Rennylea C510 Dam Coota Park Blue-E F020 F20) out of Angus/Shorthorn commercial cows, bred by artificial insemination” said Marg Killalea.
“I was confident the steers could go well as the sire had achieved high MSA compliance in earlier progeny. However, over a five-month trial there can be many influencing factors, so to end up winning is really satisfying”.
“It’s rewarding to see the breeding and commercial focus of our cattle shining through again. Of the winning pair, one steer achieved the highest daily live weight gain of 1.58 kg (the pair achieved 1.38 kgLW/day) and the other steer finished second place in the carcass results”.
This year is the second time the Killalea family have won, having previously won the weight gain/carcass award in the 2018 competition.
Marg Killalea concluded “I commend this trial to beef producers operating pasture-based systems, it’s a unique opportunity to benchmark your cattle, with valuable information provided to all entrants at the end of the trial”.