Happy New Year to you and your family (yep we know its February already - this was going to be a January Blog!). We hope you have enjoyed a relaxing break over the Christmas and New Year period. 

We were lucky enough to enter QLD and visit family in Yeppoon for 5 nights. We had a fantastic time catching up with family, fishing, swimming and enjoying a couple of days away from the farm. We have been making the most of having the boys home for school holidays by getting them to help out on the farm and also enjoying a day trip to the beach and mountain biking. 

Our little Jack Russell dog “ Foxy” had a brush with death just before Christmas!  She was bitten by a brown snake near the bridge on the creek and was rushed into the Guyra District Vet, just in time to receive the antivenom she needed to recover.  Thank you to the team at Guyra District Vet for saving our much loved pet.  Thank you also to Patty Dance for nursing Foxy while we were away in QLD over Christmas.  We hope your beloved dogs are safe from snakes this summer.

Do you still need a rainfall chart? We have rainfall charts available to post to anyone that wants one.  Please forward your postal address to kirstywhite@baldblair.com.au and we will send one to you asap. Good luck filling in those rainfall figures and we hope that the farmers that want rain receive it and those that could do with a break get one.

The thunder storms are rolling in each afternoon, with expected variations of falls between properties. This regular top up of rainfall is keeping the pasture very fresh and clover in full bloom. The bee keepers are enjoying every opportunity to get their hives onto such flowering grasses. There are bee hives all along our road and great to have them back in the district.

Caring for our Livestock

The benefits of hosting a livestock handling school at Bald Blair with Chook Kealy have been huge.  The improved teamwork, stockmanship skills, having everyone on the same page and the results in the stock work being faster and less stressful for all involved.  We have reviewed our livestock system and updated it to reflect our new skills.  We have received a fair bit of interest about the livestock school and are thinking about hosting another one with a focus on young people in December at the end of school in 2022.  If you are interested please let us know and we will see if there is enough interest.

The skills development continues with Sam, Arthur and Tom going to a Peter Hogan working dog school with their young dogs at the end of February.  Peter Hogan is based at Glencoe, just up the road.  Marge is Sam’s young Kelpie and Snippet is Arthur’s young Border Collie pup.  Kirsty is attending a Scott Keogh Horsemanship school in mid Feb.

2022 Bull Sale Team: The R bulls have received their Vibrio, 7in1 and pestiguard.  They have also received their tick fever vaccination. The bulls have been split up into two groups and will continue with their rotational grazing on high performance pastures.  We are providing them with bloat licks still.

Thank you Ramage Engineering for installing the two roller doors on our bull sale shed.  This will add additional shade and shelter for visitors at the bull sale.  Last year we experienced horizontal rain and wind, making it very uncomfortable for everyone. This addition will make for a dry experience, rain, hail or shine.

The autumn joined stud cows are calving now.  Grass is long, and we have to keep an eye out for calves in the long grass.

Sheep ! Yes, we still have them.  We have been keeping a very close watch on our sheep flock because of flies this year.  We have weaned the lambs and they are huge! The ewes were more than happy to head off without them after being drenched and moving into a fresh paddock.  The lambs are on our finishing property, Kolora  and will be finished on pasture with a grain supplement.  Some are already meeting market specifications and we will be selling at the next Guyra sheep sale.  Crutching will commence shortly, which will give us the opportunity to clean the woolshed again. 

Have you seen the new Meat and Livestock Australia lamb campaign - it is always a fantastic ad and well worth a view and share:

https://www.youtube.com/c/AustralianLamb/featured

Commercial Semen Sires. We are very pleased to offer a selection of Bald Blair Angus sires that are suitable for commercial breeding AI programmes in the forthcoming Autumn AI programmes.  These bulls have been used in our commercial herd and as cover sires for our stud herd.  These sires have been retained in the herd for use over the next few years.   They are both DNA – parent assured so you can be 100% confident they are by the sire and dam recorded.

BALD BLAIR QUEBEC Q133 PV: This homegrown sire has been retained in our own herd because we believe he meets our breeding goals, with respect to calving ease and carcase, in particular IMF.  He will not be offered for sale at our on property bull sale – and is therefore only available as semen straws.

https://angus.tech/enquiry/animal/result?page=1&tql=id%20is%20%27NBBQ133%27&sortColumnId=id&sortOrder=asc&title=&baseType=all&base=&pv=

Bald Blair Quebec Q133(PV) is a Herdbook bull out of S Powerpoint WS5503.  He is in the top 1% of the breed for Calving Ease Daughters.  His EBV’s increased to +4.0 for IMF and +4.8 for EMA.

Bald Blair Momentous NBBR71 (PV): This homegrown sire has been retained in our own herd because we believe he meets our near term breeding goals with respect to calving ease and carcase.  He will not be offered for sale at our on property bull sale in 2022. 

https://angus.tech/enquiry/animal/result?page=1&tql=id%20is%20%27NBBR71%27&sortColumnId=id&sortOrder=asc&title=&baseType=all&base=&pv=

R71 is a Lawsons Momentous M518 son, top 10% new Angus Breeding Index at time of this blog.  Good spread of Birth to growth, low Mature Cow Weight, his carcase EBV’s have changed in more recent runs EMA to 8.1 and IMF to 3.8.

Caring for our Country

Thank you Taylor McDonald for your continued fencing work. We have upgraded a section of boundary at our Gatwood block, making an underutilized paddock sheep proof again.  Abbott had the opportunity to learn the fencing trade from Taylor for a couple of days in the school holidays and appreciated the good kit. 

Future projects include completion of tree planting in our newly fenced off Riparian Zone along the Bald Blair creek running through our property. Kirsty, Abbott and Arthur were able to plant some trees in between rocks in the school holiday, however we had to have to call on Steph Sweeny again to finish the job and also plant out the new tree guard in Cruickshanks. Thankfully the Black Mountain Nursery still has native trees and shrubs on hand to plant.

More about carbon initiatives on Bald Blair in future blogs.

Caring for our Community

Thank you Susanna Greig, Science Education Officer, Growing Regional and Agricultural Students in Science UNE GRASS for providing us with the opportunity to host Emily and Kate for the GRASS industry Placement Scholarship and participate in the AGBU project on 18 January.  This project is kindly supported by AGBU team. For more information see http://www.une.edu.au/grass | https://www.facebook.com/unegrass

We are going to the ABS conference in Tamworth https://www.absglobal.com/au/beef/

Ebor Beef Forum – The Role of Carbon in Grazing : Wednesday 16 March 2022, 8.45am – 4.30pm, Armidale City Bowling Club, The Forum will feature an interesting array of speakers covering the MLAs CN30 Roadmap and the Emissions Reduction Fund and what it means to producers, a deep dive into soil carbon by Dr Susan Orgill from DPI, practical experience, and observations from agronomist Bob Freebairn, registering a Soil Carbon Project explained by Toby Grogan and an industry overview from Fiona Simpson NFF President. The event will be facilitated by Nick Pearce from Rabobank. https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing?eid=867415&

Sam and Kirsty attended the online Red Meat Ambassadors program https://www.mla.com.au/marketing-beef-and-lamb/mla-ambassadors-for-the-red-meat-industry-program/

Check it out and if you are interested do not hesitate to apply.  This is an excellent program for our industry. Please also check out these essential resources

Red Meat Green Facts https://www.redmeatgreenfacts.com.au/

Feedback Magazine - Special Edition - October 2021 https://www.mla.com.au/news-and-events/publications/feedback-magazine/

Good Meat Australia https://www.goodmeat.com.au/

Bald Blair Angus: The Data Breeder

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-data-breeder-by-bald-blair-angus/id1574009246 On the Data Breeder, we talk about how to use data to make better genetic selection decisions that will put more money back into your bank account. We will be recording some more episodes next year - so if you have any suggestions please let us know.

Kelly’s Cottage: 

Kelly’s Cottage has lots of availability!  If you are interested in booking a couple of nights away please go to our website and see the link to Airbnb. https://www.baldblairangus.com.au/farm-stay-with-airbnb We look forward to hosting our guests and sharing the sights and sounds of Bald Blair.  We often include a farm tour, so if you want to know more about what we do and why, please make a booking..

Please enjoy reading this fantastic blog post by Amanda Woods https://adventuresallaround.com/guyra-guide-new-england-nsw/

Bald Blair Angus Merchandise: Thank you to our new and return customers for supporting our online merchandise store.  We have hand towels, enamel mugs and trucking caps available.  Please check them out: https://www.baldblairangus.com.au/store/

Photo Credit: Thank you Jack Gamble for your photos from your visit to Kelly’s Cottage before Christmas.

Contact us: Sam White 0438 792 140  or Kirsty White 0427 722 908