The Morrissey family has been hand-forging cattle handling equipment and brands on the Darling Downs since the 1800s.

Their calf-cradles and irons can be found on stations all over Australia, and even on iconic ranches in America.

When the Morrisseys recently went in search of the oldest Morrissey & Co calf cradle still in use, even they were taken aback by what they found.

Launching a search via their friends and customers on social media, they managed to locate some original wooden Morrissey & Co calf cradles dating all the way back to the 1920s.

What’s more, the oldest wooden cradle they found is still being used today.

Archie Munro, “Cromarty”, Bingara, NSW, sent in the images of the working wooden cradle shown on this page.

“Our ancestral family started farming here at Bingara in the 1860s and Cromarty was divided out of the original property in about 1925 and has been owned and run by my direct family since then,” he explained.

“So, the cradle was probably purchased around the 1920s when the property started to be run independently.

“We rebuilt the yards five years ago with steel but kept the timber cradle as it works so well and was so easy to use.

“This timber Morrissey cradle brands around 300-400 calves each year.”

It is a worthy testament to old fashioned bush craftsmanship that has truly stood the test of time.

Morrissey & Co informs Beef Central that the first wooden cradle was built by Danny Morrissey in the 1920s for the Australian pastoral industry, before steel cradles were later introduced in the 1940s.

That change occurred when John ‘Jack’ Morrissey returned to Jandowae after serving in the Australian Air Force during World War II.

With him came Morrissey & Co’s first welding machine.

Serving primarily as a flight engineer, specialising in the maintenance of Walrus and Catalina Seaplanes, Jack used the welding skills he had learned to launch the first of its kind, The Morrissey Steel Calf Cradle.

Through the quest to find the oldest Morrissey & Co calf cradle, the Morrissey team also found one of the original wooden cradles which is currently being preserved by the Taroom Historical Society.

The cradle was only removed from a set of yards eight years ago to prevent any further damage.

John Morrissey pictured with one of the original Morrissey wooden calf cradles.

They also found several steel cradle photos that can be dated back to the 1950’s and even a few wooden cradles, dating back to the 1920s.

The staff in Morrissey Workshop joke that when a cradle is sold, the customer’s grandchildren will be the next to give them a call – “maybe they’re made too well!”

• Brand Aid: Can you help to identify this brand? A few weeks ago we asked Beef Central readers if they could help a reader to come up with an accurate description of a cattle brand that has been passed down through generations of her family. We received plenty of fascinating and thought-provoking answers, also demonstrating that even the language of cattle brands can be open to interpretation. Given that Morrissey and Co are among the foremost experts on cattle brands, having been forging them for over a century, we asked for their thoughts on how the brand in question should be described. The team kindly responded with some simple brand clarity, describing the brand as a symbol brand with the description ‘letter N, inside circle, with vertical bar’.