posted 10 years ago
So here's my current situation:
My wife & I have just bought and moved onto our 10 acre property in Sub Tropical Queensland Australia. The sellers used to run cows in here, so I think it should be pretty well ready to run some cows.
The pasture seems pretty good (from my very VERY limited knowledge), the block is mostly cleared with a few trees here and there, and different grasses growing well over most of the land.
There are 2 dams that are full from recent rain.
Fences are pretty good - the long fence on the boundary to the road is white ?epoxy? coated wire, and already has 1 hot wire running along it.
The other 3 boundary fences are 4 strand barbed wire, in great to reasonable condition.
With our recent subtropical heavy rains the grass has exploded in growth, so we are looking to get some cows sooner rather than later.
Goals:
1. Keep the grass down
2. Produce delicious meat for my wife and I.
I have many questions running around in my head but here's a few:
1. What type of cows should we look for or avoid? Does it really matter what type?
2. Are Dexters a good or bad idea? (Thinking good due to smaller = less compaction, less freezer space etc. Thinking bad due to smaller = easier to get through fencing, therefore harder to contain)
3. Should we get cows/heifers/steers? or weened heifer calves/bull calves/steer calves?
4. Any other considerations that we should think about?
In the future I'd like to do daily pasture rotations and follow that with a chook tractor, but for now I just want to get 2 or so cows to free range, and tweek our system from there as we go.
Thanks
Mat