Chris Turnbull, manager of Lansdowne Pastoral Company at Tambo in Western Qld.

FROM Western Queensland to Northern Victoria – for three years Lansdowne Pastoral Company has been supplying the Greenham Never Ever beef program, a specialised grassfed, HGP-free brand.

It’s a 1400km journey for the Shorthorn, Santa Gertrudis cross cattle but a partnership that pays dividends according to Landsdowne manager, Chris Turnbull.

“We breed quality cattle, so we want to chase the top end of the market and that’s where we found the top end is for our cattle, so this program works very well for us,” Mr Turnbull said.

To be eligible for financial premiums under the Never Ever beef program cattle must be lifetime traceable, 100 per cent grassfed, lifetime antibiotic-free, GMO-free (supplementary feed cannot contain genetically modified ingredients), no added hormones, free range and Meat Standards Australia (MSA) eligible.

“Our cattle are finished on our native pasture here at Tambo, on our Buffel and Mitchell grass country, we don’t contain them as we have an abundance of natural pastures, so the cattle run very holistically,” he said.

“I hated seeing our cattle being sold under value in the saleyards, given we finish them ourselves.

“We put a lot of time and effort into breeding good cattle, and I put a lot of emphasis on my weaner education and low stress stock handling.

“We started out supplying a grassfed program in Qld, but moved to Greenham’s in Victoria as they started paying a lot more money, even with the extra transport costs, the money is still better.”

Iconic sheep operation supplying high-end beef brand

Lansdowne is one of Australia’s most iconic woolgrowing enterprises and remains a sheep focused business, whilst also growing its Shorthorn cattle operation in the last 10 years with the introduction of Santa Gertrudis bulls.

“With the Santa Gertrudis bulls over our Shorthorns we’ve seen a significant increase in the growth of the cattle, just having that small amount of Braman content helps during the dry times with their browsing of the different species of grasses,” Mr Turnbull said.

“The Shorthorns can be very selective in their grazing when it dries out and they can slip away pretty quickly.

“Normally we sell our weaners off the cows if we’re having a tight season, but in the last five years we’ve had phenomenal seasons south of Tambo, so we’ve retained a lot of our yearling steers and put them right through to bullock weights.

“With the abundance of grass we have also needed the cattle to knock back the grass for our sheep to get around and graze efficiently, so the cattle have been used like a tractor more or less for our sheep.”

Lansdowne supplies about 400 bullocks and 200 cull heifers to the Never Ever program each year.

“Usually, our best time of year for finishing cattle is through from December, January, February, when we have a nice green flush of feed,” he said.

Beef from Tambo in high-end restaurants around the world

Long journeys are not unusual in Australia’s beef industry with the 1400km journey from Tambo in Western Qld to Tongala in Northern Vic similar to the length cattle travel from the Channel Country to Brisbane or cattle from the Pilbara to Perth.

In an effort to ensure the cattle from Lansdowne meet MSA requirements to supply the Never Ever beef program, Mr Turnbull said he trucks the cattle overnight so it is cool and they are processed the following day at Greenham’s Tongala plant.

“It’s a great thing that beef from northern Australia can be competitive with beef in the south and marketed alongside it in high-end restaurants,” Mr Turnbull said.

“I have seen some of the Never Ever beef marketed in Sydney at a restaurant I was at and I know a lot of it goes to high-end restaurants in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane as well as internationally.

“For us it’s about getting rewarded for our quality cattle and seeing beef from Western Qld sold to high-end markets.”