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Shorthorn Beef The Shorthorn Society of Australia The first decade of the 21st Century featured an extended drought recorded as one of the worst in the short history of European settlement in Australia. The big dry forced livestock breeders to choose between buying fodder at record prices to maintain their valuable flocks and herds and hope that the rains would arrive sooner rather than later or consign their breeders to slaughter. However, the decade was also notable for the sale of several corporate pastoral interests of massive scale and the entry of a number of large foreign investors seeking a significant presence in Australian agriculture. The expansion and consolidation of established corporate interests which coincided with foreign interest pushed freehold land and pastoral leasehold land values to new record levels.
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beef shorthorn
Northern pastoral properties and herds have been sold at three and fourfold their valuation ten years earlier. The live export of feeder cattle underpins this pastoral investment and in recent years the value of steers and heifers shipped from northern ports to Asia has exceeded the value of feeder steers destined for the high-value global markets. A lasting legacy of the drought and high feed costs is the reduction of days-onfeed from 220 to 150 days of high energy feeding for the Japanese and Korean table beef markets. The shorter regime means that breeders and backgrounders selling to feedlots must hold cattle for longer periods to meet the higher feedlot entry weights specified. It has also placed increased pressure on breeders to ensure that the growth, carcass yield and marbling genetics of their herds are able to meet the requirements of feedyards.