Productivity and Profitability Media Series
The Productivity & Profitability series presents new and topical information to help southern producers increase the success of their businesses.
Beef, sheep and goat producers can listen to a diverse range of expert speakers present webinars and podcasts to aid on-farm decision making. Plus, producers will find relevant resources and MLA programs to continue their learning journey.
Productivity and Profitability Media Series
Virtual fencing in Australian beef systems
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Long before virtual fencing became available, Michael Gooden from OId Man Creek was measuring grass, matching stocking rate to carrying capacity and building a cattle breeding programme around animals that could thrive in a pasture-based system.
On a mixed farming operation west of Wagga Wagga, Michael has spent the past two decades refining his grazing management using high-frequency cell grazing with temporary polywire. In early 2026, Michael transitioned to virtual fencing using Halter collars across 190 animals and has changed from driving to the farm for every-other-day shifts to two or three moves a day from a cafe in Wagga Wagga.
Michael says, however, that virtual fencing is not a replacement for good grazing knowledge. The technology only works as well as the underlying understanding behind it, and Michael is quick to point out that the fundamentals of feed budgeting, recovery rates and animal demand have not changed. What has changed is the speed and precision with which those decisions can now be implemented, and the flexibility it creates in managing variable feed supply through the season.
Welcome to another episode of productivity and profitability. Today's guest is Michael Gooden, and today's focus is virtual fencing. Virtual fencing, as I guess ten years ago, was something we dreamt about and is now a reality with a few companies delivering those bits of kit into into renter prices. We've seen massive uptake across the beef industry, across New Zealand and Australia, and and globally. And uh yeah, really interested to have a chat with Michael about how he is bringing that that technology into his business. Michael is a fourth generation farmer farming in southern New South Wales near Waggawagga. He runs an Angus seed stock enterprise as well as a commercial herd. He's also done a fair bit of work with RCS Australia, so he's well versed on all things grazing management. So it's uh a really interesting chat with Michael around his enterprise, but also how virtual fencing is changing the dial there near Waggawagga. We'll get underway with this week's show. Welcome, Michael Gooden, to productivity and profitability. Yeah, thanks, folks. Great to have you, mate. And uh yeah, really keen to I guess we'll start with talking all things grazing management and the business there, and then move through to kind of how you've automated that or how you've increased uh the frequency of shifts and how that's becoming easier, I guess, as we as we go through that conversation. Before we get into that, maybe yeah, just an introduction as to where you are and what you're farming and uh yeah, I guess your history up to now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so our family's got a property 70 K's west of Wagga in southern East Wales, or Wag Wagga. Uh yeah, between Wagga and Narandra, 380 hectares that we own there, and we leased another about 240 odd uh through traveling stock reserves. Um we've been running that place uh as it was a part of a larger family property into the all my parents were there, grandparents were there, and that type of thing. Um we took it over in 2008, uh part sort of midway through the millennium drought. I came back into the family business in 2004 after being away at uni and a few other things. So yeah, we have um and it in 2016 then we established uh a seed stock business um as a sort of a flow on from our love of livestock.
SPEAKER_00So between 08 and 16 that was all cattle, but then seed stock after 16, or has it always been just cattle or has it been a combo?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, a bit of everything. We I grew up on a genuine mixed farm. Um my father did a lot a lot of copping and and in livestock integration. I never that never really stuck with me too much. And then uh when I was at uni, I had a really great experience down in the Western District working on a property with a lot of sheep and cattle, and that I really got a love for that. Uh so then in 08, I really, yeah, when we had that autonomy to take over the business, we had a livestock focus. Um, I'd never really seen livestock managed the way they were. Like I just, yeah, it I I to see how we could manage them and and sort of make good money out of them with a lot less risk was a real attraction to us, especially in that millennium drought period, because we had the technology in the millennium drought. We bought a mixer and all this stuff, so we had the technology to feed animals well, but we didn't probably have the business now to actually do it profitably. So then this uh, and also we're probably still feeding, didn't have a lot of containment. We sort of had a lamb feed lot, but not yeah, not containing well, so that was a bit difficult. So yeah, we just needed to get uh figures around, like you know, make sure we're gonna, if we're gonna be feeding animals, be doing it profitably. And then that's when I sort of stumbled across the holistic management part of it, which was in and around grazing management. How do you accurately pasture budget? You know, how do you ration out how much you've got, how do you put some good numbers around if you are gonna feed an animal, or what class of animal it is for how long, and what's it gonna cost? Are you gonna make money out of it? All that sort of piece. So that and putting a value on the cost of grass, too. We we still actually do some irrigation, but every time if you go anywhere near an irrigation pump to push the button, you've got to work out, you know, what's it gonna cost, how much grimet am I going to grow? Have I got an animal that's gonna utilize that? Or in our situation where we are, we're in the mid-Marambidie, we can one email I can go and sell water for whatever it is on the day, and I'll get a check seven days later. So we've got that real opportunity cost of what are we going to use water for, or or you know, what's it cost to grow grass? Um, how can we, you know, can we sell the water and and you know, either not use it at all, you know, just use that money for income in our business.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, interesting. Thanks, mate. The yeah, maybe we'll talk through some of that, those decision rules that you've put in place in terms of uh how long where how do you know how much grass is in front of you and and how do you know how to best utilize that. And obviously going into seed stock means you're a little bit uh constrained, but uh in terms of what you can't be as mobile as you can be without seed stock, but you're still be still be uh needing to know where that grass is coming from. What sort of tools are you using to manage that grass?
SPEAKER_01Well, I suppose first off on the seed stock part of it is our sort of rule of thumb is we between 60 and 70% of our carrying capacity we have as seed stock business uh as our seed stock animals. Uh that's including their followers, obviously, because the followers in a seed stock business are uh worth a lot to you. We tend to sell most of our bulls as yearlings, so that sort of helps in some ways, although from a pure pasture budgeting perspective, you know, ideally we're selling most of them at 14, 15 months of age in that second spring, which is often when you don't necessarily want to be selling from a pasture management perspective. You might have 50 animals going, but you don't really need them going up for the pasture budget. But we often trade them, swap them back out with a trade animal. That trade animal may well be a heifer that we join with as some of our own genetics and sell them on again, but it's still matching your stocking rate to carrying capacity, but you're doing that yeah as a trade at that time of year. Um, and I'd probably go back a step or two, like we when I got into the holistic management, you know, the big key of that was measuring how much grass you had on hand, rationing that out, and and so how many animals could you run? Um, and we were trading a lot of animals basically on a monthly basis. How much feed have we got ahead? You know, do we sell them, do we keep them, do we buy more? And that became a little bit exhausting in a lot of ways because you're always sort of on a cat in a hot tin roof, especially where we are in the river arena, like things can change pretty quick smart for us. Um and I never really enjoyed, well, I did enjoy the uh the trading to a certain extent, but it's a certain type of personality. I certainly didn't enjoy the ego around being at the sale yards. That was something that didn't, you know, yeah, it sit well with me. And and also, yeah, just competing with people, you know, a lot different scale and spending you know other people's money and that, and I'd be there trying to buy animals myself, and it just I just didn't enjoy that environment. And then, you know, a couple of ordinary trades or poor decisions on my behalf, and so that the gloss ran off that. I remember one of the times we did a trade, cows out of the New England uh pre PTIC, carved them down here, and the by far and away the best trade at the time was for us to split them up as cows for calves at foot. And we sold the cows, and then the calves couldn't go for like 24 hours just because of different circumstances. And I was loading these calves 24 hours later, and they were bellowing and carrying on, and you know, one kicked me in the shin, and I was just thinking, oh, Jesus, this just doesn't line up with where we want to be, like as our values as people and how we're wanting to be running our business. Like you sort of forget when the check comes in seven days later, but it just didn't sit well with me. And I'd had this experience with seed stock work working on my mid-year at uni, and that always was a bit of an itch. And then I had also a couple of years um working with um, I'd done some work with Tom Bull down at Holbrook as well with his seed stock business, and that part of it, you know, manipulating animals, breeding an animal that's fit to market, that type of thing, I was really keen on. So I'd also come across um this guy, Kit Farrow from America, in the meantime, and that sort of he what he was saying, and also the other piece of this comes along was understanding that through the trading that we were doing, you could see some animals perform really well in our in the cell grazing system, and others wouldn't. And you're sort of wondering why that happened, but you wouldn't often know the genetic history behind that animal because it might be a trade animal that came in a consignment that you bought four or five different ways or whatever, you might have a pick number and that's about it. Um so observing that, seeing why is this animal doing really well, and then why is the animal same feed, same paddock, same moves, but they're not performing. So, you know, that was well, it's got to be genetics, really, it's got to be the factor. Um, so you start going down a few of those rabbit holes, and that's when we got into the seed stock business. And that's been a process, like you know, breeding cattle takes a long time, and we haven't really jumped into AI or embryo. We've done a bit of AI, but no embryo work yet. And so we've probably taken our time in that system to see which animals are performing. You know, are we happy with how they're going? Are they carving within that, you know, 365-day window, uh, getting back in calf and calving unassisted? Are we happy with their progeny, structure, temperament, adaptability, all those things? So there's a fair bit of culling that goes on in that process. And we only, you know, it's really only 10 years this year that we started that. So we're really only safely sort of saying we're getting consistent animals coming through year in, year out now in a cattle breeding enterprise that are fitting that bill.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I guess your your objective is is very solid on that grass-based production system and cattle that will optimize for that system, and so your breeding objective is very much down that line, which uh I guess means that you'll be using the EBVs available kind of differently than what some other breeders might be doing, which are chasing a grain fed market or whatever. So it's sort of been you've tailored the selection strategy towards that production system.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, very much so. And interesting, uh, one of the podcasts I was listening to yours this week was Fuller saying, Oh, you've got to be a bit ahead of yourself in terms of the breeding objective. And I suppose at the time in 2016, what you know, my gut feeling was that the social license of a feedlot in 2030 is probably gonna be under some pressure. Also, knowing you know, the emissions piece, the sort of CN30 targets, were that was going to be a difficult, you know, position to be in. And so I felt that we wanted to breed an animal that was going to not have to be in that production system. And, you know, I'm not necessarily anti-feedlot, I'm just thinking, well, the point of difference to be had in the market here, obviously a lot of places, uh, especially Angus seed stock, which we're in, that have set themselves up to be good animals performing in a feedlot. So the industry probably didn't need that, where I felt there was an opportunity for that grass market. Um, there's the human nutrition part of it as well, but also that's the social license bit. And knowing full well that animals, like it's a very different type of animal. We're breeding an animal that's moderate frame, inherent body condition, uh, slower growth genuinely, but you know, very good carving ease, shorter gestation length, moderate mature cow weight, but good body condition. So it's it is a genuinely different package if you start looking at the numbers. And don't get me wrong, I'm a huge advocate for and believer in EBVs, and we measure everything almost too much in some ways, but it's we're just actually we're using the animal that I'm looking for, and the or the numbers that I'm looking at are often at the opposite end to where the mainstream Angus is. Um, but you know, we're genomically testing everything, we're taking all our um phenotypic measurements as well, but we're just looking at it looking at the package in a different way at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, excellent. If we swing to kind of grazing management, and a big chunk of your time in ag has been sort of, I guess, starting to appreciate what that can do for soil and plant and animal. And yeah, I guess you are in an area that probably doesn't maintain heaps of perennials in some places, so yeah, yeah, I guess learning how to manage that grass. Talk us through kind of what that journey's been like.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, interesting what you say about the perennials, because they're there when you let them come. We did a pretty good job as a you know, through farm management over 50, 80 years to get rid of a lot of them, but roadside is still a lot of them on there. And uh, I suppose the difference is productive perennials and animals that'll uh perennials that'll put on kilos of weight. We've yeah, so we've had a few different structures at how to how we go about managing that. Ultimately, it's been we're managing for what's there. We haven't done a lot of sowing. We've still got a reasonable amount of annual production, like annual ryegrass and clover is the backbone of our feed base this time of year. But what's been really pleasing is with the through the grazing management over the last 10 or 12 years, is our actual pasture growth curve's flattened out a little bit. And we get very res we're very responsive to any summer rain, which we do get. We've got a reasonable amount of lucin in our system, but also we've got these summer perennials, which are actually really productive for us at that time of year with the type of feed that we need. But the, you know, the ryegrass and clover is still a pretty big important part of what we do in the winter time. We've got a bit of phalaris actually coming back into our country, which is you know reasonable and as much diversity as we possibly can get. So, like the pasture budgeting piece is we just want to have as much feed there as we can, um, you know, ultimately um have having the same amount of animals to eat it at the same time. And but it's more about making that decision around if you don't have as much feed as you need, what do you do about it? You know, do you pull the lever on try and grow some more feed? Do you change your stocking rate? Um, you know, a combination of both. That can change throughout the time of year. If you're in the middle of carving, you've you can't do too much about and you're a bit tight on feed. Well, you've got the the only lever you can pull is how can we grow more feed in a hurry? We're probably trying to think about that six to eight weeks even further ahead than that. Or conversely, you know, is there an opportunity to put some more livestock on? Um, and you know, how much feed will that class of livestock require for the you know, three to six months, something like that, if you've got lives if you've got cattle trade. We don't wouldn't usually do a cattle trade any less than sort of three months.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I guess that takes discipline around having the the information necessary to to know that you're gonna or you how much feed you got now and what you're like it to have in that over that three month period. And uh uh in a previous interview on this podcast, we talked to Ken Sully and he talked about when others are running you walk and when others are walking you run. So it's kind of And that's kind of the I guess part of the success of trading is kind of I guess being a little bit ahead of the game by knowing what's ahead of you. And that's uh are you is that a manual process go out and assess pasture or you sort of start to get your eye in now that you kind of don't need to be as regimented around that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I still physically do like you know, even today I just spent probably two hours looking at pasture on the farm, and with you know, like we'll touch on in a bit, but now that I've freed up some of that time because I'm not necessarily pulling out wires, um, it's actually become a really important part of what I do. You know, we've looked at some of the technologies around the SIBO labs or you know, different satellite stuff. I think it's got a certainly got a place for it, but nothing beats getting out there and seeing what is in your paddock. And and I think it's taking it to another layer in terms of what are the animals eating? Like I love getting into the paddock. Say you move a mob of, you know, it happened this afternoon. I moved a mob at two o'clock, and I was in the paddock when that happened. And just spend 15 or 20 minutes there and observe what grasses are they eating first? Where what are they going for? And then what's the uh interaction of the animals? Are they just is it frenzy? Is it like, are they really hungry when you're putting them in there or are they content? They're just sort of motioning in, type of thing. Watching what grasses they go for first and then what they're sort of going back later on. Obviously, there's the observations around the dung of the animal, what what is it firm or is it hard, or is it running through them or not? Um, and then their gut-filled prior to the move as well. So building a base around that is really important. Um, and then you've got your seasonal conditions in terms of you know what your rolling average rainfall is. That's a big number we like to look at. So are we above average, below on track? And you know, that's been a bit over the shot for us in the last little bit because, you know, we had, you know, the last we had 20, 50 mils on the 10th of September. We didn't have a double digit rain until Valentine's Day. We had 100 mils in 30 days, we had another 45 days with no rain, and then we've had another 100 mils in the last 30 days. So it's just it is what it is. Um, we've been on this little bit of a pendulum the last six months, like that. But all through that, we've still maintained, you know, probably oh, we got down to about 60 days worth of feed uh in the autumn when things were tight. But then, and our strategy was we were gonna, we'd bought, we'd sold water and we were gonna buy hay. And then we in the end we just didn't end up buying the hay because it started running again and we're away again now. And looking at the pastures that I was looking at this afternoon, like we're in a really good spot now. We saw temperatures still above 15 degrees, which for us, first week in June's apart from it being really good, it's a real worry, I reckon. Like it's sort of yeah, I'm gonna run with it at the moment, but you know, you think, well, geez, I hope it doesn't get to 45 in September. Look, you know, because it could, you know, who knows? But it's just it's really great in the short term, having this warm growth and recovery and all this stuff. But it's you know, I think 2017, I think we had 15 frosts in May. So that was the end of that growing until the spring that year. So every year's a little bit different like that. But I mean, getting back to the nuts and bolts of it, for me, like the thing I can control is how much feed we've got on the farm and how many animals. So I want to get pretty accurate, you know, these key times of the year to know how much feed, like because we're saying now, right, well, we're gonna start a car start carving in the middle of July. So, you know, there's not much we can do between now and sort of 1st of October from a, you know, we could easily probably bring more animals in, but it'd be pretty difficult for us to take animals out. So we need to know we're pretty comfortable with how much feed we've got on hand. Is it gonna get us through to that point? And then we're probably already making decisions around, you know, do we is there gonna be an opportunity to get more livestock on, or you know, am I gonna just lock a paddock up and just let it absolutely go rank? Um, and then we know that we can come back into that paddock in the autumn time and really get that like we'll still get the feed out of it, but it'll be with a m with a mob of cows that'll have to work pretty hard for it, um, which I'm happy to do. Like the numbers on can conservation of feed, pretty dubious in a lot of ways when you start looking at you know the true cost of baling, raking, cutting, the risk of damage, weather damage, and all that. I'd much prefer just lock 30 hectares up and and know I'm gonna get it, you know, in the autumn time with and get cows, you know, cows that have had calves weaned off them, but put cows in there and they're just gonna have to tough it out for a little while. Like we breed animals for that purpose. So, yeah, we're comfortable to do that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I guess that's the beauty of being an old cattle system is that like if that was a sheep system and you let that feed go rank, it's pretty much you may as well burn and just try and get sheep to eat it, but cattle will will churn through it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and we I mean, the the whole adage of the haystack on the back of the cow, that's where we want to put it. It's a very cheap way, and the cattle type of cattle we breed, they will fatten up quite quickly in the springtime. And you know, we're quite happy to put on probably two condition scores, if not more than that, um, in the spring and get them really fat, and then we'll pull that out off them, you know, some of that post-weaning, or most of it probably pre-weaning, should I say, and then and then, you know, once you've weaned a cow in our system, it's pretty hard to knock them around too much. You you have to, you know, knock them around a lot or give them you know not much at all for them not to get through to carving. And then, you know, we're just as long as we can sneak around that body score one and a half to two this time of year, we'll know we'll be right pretty well to get through carving. And then, you know, it's really only that six weeks post-carving for us, which when their intake really starts going, and nine times out of ten, that'll line up with when our feed's getting away, which is yeah, which and we we pretty well with the covers we've got on at the moment, we know that we we we're gonna be right for that this year.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. As you've sort of evolved the system, is the carving time changed to make sure you kind of I mean, I know it's a variable, very variable time for a pasture curve, but has that been tweaked much or that sort of stayed pretty standard?
SPEAKER_01Oh, a little bit, like I mean, my father used to carve in the autumn and in the spring, the old classic sort of, you know, and you wouldn't ever know where cows were up to or whatever. And we tightened everything up to the spring just to that simple, you know. Well, uh when I worked in the Western District, that was he was a big believer of, you know, had to carve in in line with your with your pasture growth curve, which made a lot of sense to me. And I think in an ideal world, like if we weren't in a seed stock business, I'd probably carve. A fortnight to a month later, like just pure commercially. I think 1st of August, sort of mid-August. If you could calve everything within 21 days, then we'd probably go 1st of August. We tend to sort of aim for the 15th of July, knowing that we'll get a calf probably from the any time from the 5th of July, give or take a bit. But then, you know, we'll be genuinely finished. Like we won't get many calves come after sort of 20th of August. So yeah, but we need on the other end, you know, we really want to have yearling bulls to sell by middle of September the following year. So we're yeah, we're probably a fortnight out of whack there a little bit, but I wouldn't go changing it too much. I certainly wouldn't want to go much later, like because we just, you know, we can October's a make or break for us. It can either be our best month or our worst month. And you've got to have like, yeah, if we're going to put weight on cows, we we'd want to have that happening in September in our operation, not hoping that it's going to happen in October. They can still keep putting it on in October, but it could all be over by then too, if you're not careful. So it can happen pretty quickly. But I think that's where having that system that the animal sort of in control, that they're if if they've got the conditions in front of them to put the weight on to lay that on their back, that's a really simple system for us. Um, and then you know, we'll be happy to take you know upwards of 150, even more, 200 kilos off a cow. Um, so our you know, our sort of standard reference at weaning time, if we said conditions score three and you know they're 500 and 550 kilos sort of thing, give or take, um, as a mature cow. So we'll end up with, you know, our first carving heifers might be 430 kilos. Like uh, you know, it's a there's a big difference, but we're happy to take sort of 70 to 150 kilos off an animal quite easily from this from its peak, you know, heavy weight to back to that condition school too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, right. I want to quickly bounce to kind of you've been chatting with a few consumers lately, uh, and then echo we'll sort of roll forward into pasture grazing or pasture management, grazing management. You've been telling about your own product, and I guess keen just to hear what conversations you've had, I suppose, around that, Stan, as much as anything, like as what what people are saying, and yeah, I guess what what the vibe has has been like uh in that, because not everyone gets to kind of talk directly to people consuming their product, which is uh often quite informative.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's been a really interesting like process, Verg. I've really enjoyed it actually. It's it's um there's nothing more sort of uh you're putting yourself out there and selling your meat directly to the customer. Like and you know, from a scalability perspective in that, we're only doing it on a small scale. We're sort of doing about a body a week. And it's it came about we're doing it into a local growers' hub market. And thankfully, since March, that's transitioned to a six day-a-week uh sort of co-op supermarket, which we're one of the founding members of. So there was a period of time when I was there, sort of day and a half a week, and I was thinking, well, geez, if this goes on for much longer, we won't be, we'll run out of beef pretty quickly because it's very time consuming. But you know, yeah, it's they're all animals all finished off our own place, um, all 100% grass-fed, and doesn't lie at all when you're, you know, you're trying to kill an animal in January in Australia and you're thinking, well, we've got to get it into a fridge here in a presentable state with, you know, eight to twelve mils of fat. But we're really pleased that our genetics were doing that. And that was probably um, you know, the ultimate aim for us is to build the old man creek brand to into a, you know, to get our clients to be able to sell that into that and to probably operate more on a wholesale meat meat level rather than just into a couple of retail outlets. But I wanted to learn about how that would work and what animals perform well, or do our animals perform well more so than anything. You know, what how people want their meat cut up and you know what sells, what doesn't sell, you know, what times of year that works, you know, the whole butcher scene, um, you know, yeah, what how how they deal with an animal actually selling the whole animal to, which is a really interesting thing because you sort of so much of the modern beef now, it you know, it might go 20 different ways if it's going into a big abatto. You know, Shin goes to China and 90 C L goes to the into a burger into America and then a top end might end up into into Asia or into a top restaurant in Australia. We're we're actually literally trying to put a whole animal through two or three outlets in a you know, country town in in Wales. But it is really interesting. Yeah, uh I certainly enjoyed that that process getting to know that and the feedback you get from the consumers, um, really great. You know, some people uh you know they won't buy your meat because it's too expensive or such. Um others, you know, don't care what the price is, they just want to meet you and they're happy to know it's grass-fed and you know, all that type of thing. Probably a little bit, I've been um a bit surprised, probably more so that how few want to know, like how we farm, sort of thing. You think that that might be part of it, but they they want to meet the farmer, know that you're the person producing it, but not necessarily have too many questions past that, um, which has been interesting. And but you know, and then some other people will come up and you know they'll talk to you for 20 minutes, and if yeah, you're hoping they bore buy more than one packet of sausages. So, I mean, that was a little bit early on. I'm not I'm out of the market so much now, but uh and certainly the you know, respecting the nose-the-tail part of it and selling the whole animal um has been really interesting, but it really does give you an appreciation for uh how sort of streamlined and competitive that that main beat in the like you know, the big supermarkets, you know, they they'd have a lot of meat going through there and it'll be going you know various different ways, even just the practicalities of you know, finding a butcher in Wagga. I think there's 12 butchers in Wagga. There's only about two or three that would handle whole bodies, which is I was a little bit surprised by. I was thinking, well, shoot, you know, you you're not really a butcher if you're not, you know, you're basically just unpacking cartons, but there's a lot of that that happens, and that's so much of that meat trade nowadays. They just they'll buy it either from the local abators or the sort of meat wholesalers, and they'll just get in the cuts that the customers want. So we've got to get a bit creative. This time of year is great. The winter time is really good to move some of that sort of um slow cooker uh chucking and all that type of stuff, which we tend to get a lot of.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, right. So the yeah, I mean, I think anyone that goes to that line enjoys the university of the butcher shop or university of the meat, the meat stand, because it's kind of yeah, a lot of things that I guess we kind of assume that it's yeah, all beer and skittles for every other part of the chain except ours, but in reality, when you have a play on the other someone else's part, that's it's not all not all.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I I the one takeaway I'll take from it from our own perspective, and you know, given this context of uh, you know, we're the first half of 2026, you know, the numbers for me, it cost us about $15 a kilo to get meat in a fridge in Wagga, retail outlet. That's paying us fair market for the animal, taking it to the abattoir, bringing it back, putting it through a butcher, blah, blah, blah, all that. And so when you see sausages on the supermarket shelf for eight or nine dollars, it makes you think, well, it can't all be meat in that, you know, and what you know, what are the yeah, how is it being produced for that? Um, so that's giving us a real appreciation to you know what some of those costs are. Um and so, yeah, if you you know, you see some of that, you see the the high-end primers selling for $100 a kilo, it's actually, you know, that's only 6% of the animal or something along those lines. And everyone wants to buy that. And we we could, we could, you know, we don't sell our meat at quite at that level, but it's you know between you know sixty and eighty dollars. And um, but we got price is not an issue. If someone wants to come and buy that, they'll they'll you know, that's not an issue at all. And you know, you could I sort of remember that some of the things that Tom Bull was talking about, you know, if you could have rack and loin like all day, you'd you that's what you'd have. And and I can really empathize with him on that because it is that that's that part of it's really easy. It's getting dealing with the rest of it, having a good quality mince. We've really stuck to our guns on the flavour that grass fed has got is really good in that space. And also we make a you know bit of a niche, gluten-free, preservative-free sausage that sort of coders the people a bit more health conscious like that. And I think there's genuinely a movement at the moment to know, I want to know where your food's coming from. Certainly, some of them's just local full stop, some of it's the health aspect of it, the grass-fed aspect of it. Yeah, it's a bit there's a it everyone's a little bit different on that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thanks, mate. I thought it'd be just good to hear your perspective on on that front. If we swing now to your grazing management, which is sort of the main point of this conversation, which has taken us taken us half an hour to get to, but that's good because we've got a really good background. But I'd like to start with kind of how you were doing things, like kind of where you started in 2008 and with what paddock sizes were or whatever, and then kind of how your wire and water program's gone from there, and then we'll get on to when you sort of can sit and do it from a cafe.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I suppose I well, we when we got into holistic management, it became pretty clear that one of the principles there is you know, as many um as fewer mobs and as many paddocks, and so and I had seen when I was at Marcus, we did a tour of New Zealand in 2001, and I we were actually had the privilege of going to Harry Weir's place, the founder of Kiwi Tech at Bulls there. And um, so I'd been there and seen that and sort of just didn't really think too much more of it, but but it was sort of in the back of my head, and then so um I yeah, when we got into the cell grazing part, I was thinking, well, I know what we can do here. So the farm that we looked at converting, it was an irrigation farm, broad acre farm in the River Arena. So it was nothing for us to have sort of 65 hectare paddocks, yeah. You know, 40 hectare was a small paddock, 65, you know, probably 80 hectares, sort of with a you know, common size. So for us, I set about sort of subdividing some paddocks with a permanent fence on an A B line. By that stage, we were using GPS and all that, like in the cropping part of it. I didn't really enjoy the cropping side of it, but I sort of knew that we it was best to probably stick with our land a bit like that. We had really poor water infrastructure uh because it was an old irrigation farm, you know, that we used to just fill up a channel here and there, and that's how we ran water. So to probably cut my umbilical cord from the grain part of it, I actually sold some silos and silos um to a neighbor, and we put that money into water uh infrastructure. So we put 9Ks initially of underground main, 63 mil. Um we needed we knew that through the education we dad, we needed a good flow rate uh into our paddock. So we were working on sort of two litres a second to any point on the farm. And then the stage two was a couple of years later, we ended up with um a hydrance uh about every 150 to 200 metres on the farm with a like a 40 mil outlet into a temporary water trough. And I went down the temporary path. One way I couldn't afford to put in like concrete troughs, and uh and I was still in two mines because I was sort of still thinking long narrow paddocks like from the cropping days. Um, but a lot of the designs at the time were around based around the cell centres, um, and you know, uh the wagon wheel type of cell center. That didn't really quite coincidence didn't line up well with our land at the time because it was in this irrigation like a lot of lasered paddocks. So, but now in hindsight, that was a real blessing in a lot of ways because I've seen a lot of those cell centres that can be quite restrictive because you've got this fixed paddock size. So we started using the Kiwi Tech fencing, and that's just a temporary single polywire. Um, we have used some dual wires when we've had sheep on from time to time. I initially had that set up on a four-wheeler, and I went through about four or five of them, and then eventually in 20 about 22, I got a side-by-side set up, and that took a little bit of mucking around. I was a bit yeah, hesitant to do that. I didn't think I could, and we couldn't get it done off the side by side, but I actually did it and we sort of had to re- uh had to mirror it all, but it worked, and it actually worked better than I had anticipated in the end. It ended up being easier to do off the out of the side-by-side than it was a four-wheeler, and obviously a lot safer, and you're in there and all that, you know, so much easier. Um, but then that only sort of lasted probably two or three years, and then in February this year, then we just started using uh virtual fencing the through halter. So, and I was I'd seen that um at a beef week field day in about 2021 or so up in central Queensland, and I wasn't that impressed with it, I must admit. At the time I was pretty fortunate, I had an inside because I was working at RCS and I knew they'd done the business case on it, and the numbers didn't quite stack up. And then also it just yeah, it just didn't seem to me then that the technology was where it was. And I sort of parked it on the shelf thinking, oh, that's good. We Kiwi Tech's working well, you know, we know how to do this, but we still always had this labor component of you have to be a couple of days ahead of yourself. Like you've got to know when you're moving animals into the area, like how long are they gonna be in there? When can you next get back and move them? We were pretty fortunate that because we had the temporary fencing, we could always change the size of the area that the cattle were going into. So if they're gonna be in there for half a day, a day, five days, we could just change that area. We were pretty, pretty lucky with that flexibility. But then, yeah, I got a call out of the blue late last year with a uh local sales rep for Holter, and she happened to be in Wagga. And um, you know, I try and be a pretty open-minded person. So I said, yeah, fine, come out, you know, happy to listen. And I had it set up on the day, I had the animals in about um 0.8 of a hectare, and I was moving them into 1.2 or with the polywide, and I had them on the buggy, I thought I'll go out there and I'll show off to them and so show her how easy it is, and um, which we sort of did, and they were pretty comfortable with that. And then I just hit them up and I said, Look, if you can't what you've got, if your technology can't do it better than that, then you know I don't want to know about it basically. And, you know, they spent another hour or so talking to me and you know, pretty well convinced me then and there on paper that they would be able to. So we I think it was the 6th of February, we put our first collars on. We've got 190 collars. That's on all uh every animal on the place. We've still got it, we've got a handful just sitting in the cattle yards at the moment because we need to you need to make sure you've got enough for all your animals. Yeah, and since then, I mean it's been incredible. We've been been blown away with the accuracy of how how often we can move, um, you know, how easy it is to do it, you know, just all these other little things that and I mean the the coolest thing for me is you know, I'm pretty good at doing one thing and then changing mind and doing another thing, and something else pops up. And but I can so I can still plan on the cattle just being moved whenever and that just happens. Um, I don't have to be back there to move a polywire um all the time. So that part of it's been really yeah, having that flexibility and and also genuinely be able to do it from anywhere. So, yeah, it's an you know the app on your phone, and as long as you've got a bit of phone service, which you don't doesn't happen all the time. You I was down the Murray River for five or six days in back into March, and I'm one afternoon I generally had to run up the hill about you know two K's to get it. So I had one bar of service to be able to move a mobile cattle, which was a you know a bit of a learning curve for my end. I should have had it a bit more organized and more planned another couple of days ahead.
SPEAKER_00Better than driving back to the farm to do it, mate.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, this is the thing, so you soon you soon take it for granted. Um and I think like there's a couple of things that we've sort of changed since we've had Holter. Like, I probably really only used to move, sometimes I do twice a day, but usually once a day. And it used to end up being nearly every other day, really, because um, you know, got I we don't live on the farm, so we I live 70 kilometres off the farm in in Wagga in the local town. My wife works full-time off farm, and we've got three young kids, or when I say young, like youngest is eight to twelve. So pretty busy sort of life like that. And so I was regularly not moving at all, sort of over the weekend, try not to um try and do a couple of moves a day, like probably during the middle of the week or that type of thing, when you can get out there and do that. Yeah, so now we can we can you safely move probably two, if not three times a day, uh every day. And you used to always find, you know, if you didn't move one day, or you daily moves you probably get away with it, but if you're moving every second day, you probably need to give them another 20-30% feed, just sort of just saving grace, bit of buffer. And we're finding now we're not doing any of that because we're moving so regularly, and then also we're genuinely getting better utilization with the grazing we're doing. Admittedly, we've had a pretty good patch of growth, like since we've had like grass growth, I mean, since we've been using halt, especially this last sort of 40-50 days. So, like at the moment, I'm pretty happy to take, you know, almost you know, 80-90% utilization out of these paddocks. Um, the cattle are pretty happy with it because they trust me that they're going to get the right allocation the next time. Or, you know, so that's a really good sort of backwards and forwards with the cattle and how much we're taking out. Um, I'm happy with you know with the recovery that we're getting in those paddocks, but we're getting really good utilization and the season's going with us a little bit at the moment in terms of we're getting good recovery behind, which is really great. And with the season that we're having, because we had that sort of hundred mils Valentine's Day on, we had a lot of our summer grasses grow, and that's really great because then we've had kept getting some rain, and we've got all our winter annules coming up through it as well, and that really balances this time of year, it's great because that the cattle are going through our old summer grasses with the sort of dry stuff frosted on top, and they're having to dig down to get to the ryegrass and clover underneath, and that's really balancing their rumen really well. That doesn't always happen like that, but makes you look, you know, it's really good for the cattle and our past utilization. Obviously, everything that's growing behind now is more annuals, clover and ryegrass, but we're happy with that. We won't get back to that for 90 days or probably even more now. And you think going forward 90 days and you know, first week in June puts you in a pretty good spot. We're gonna have a fair liquor feed there. And we'll probably come through then and just take the top off that without getting too far ahead of ourselves, and that'll set it right up for having really good quality of dry feed, like into the summertime sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, excellent. Yeah, obviously that you already had past utilization pretty sorted with with the amount of shifting you were doing. But yeah, interesting that you go on that next level again with with because you can just move them.
SPEAKER_01Yes, like mathematically, we were on two hectares a day, like the in the uh paddocks we were on before we put the collars on, and within about three or four days, I'd you know, we'd gone to 1.75, I reckon. And we're probably even less than that now. Like, you know, pastures, pastures, pastures type of thing. So not every paddock's the same and all that, but you know, you you know your areas you farm pretty well. So I think there's that genuine saving. Um like the other part of it that I really like is it's it's our ability, especially in our business, it's our ability to put our animals under even more pressure, you know, within reason of what their intakes requirements are, and you know, we're not trying to stress them out. So, you know, really genuine that relationship you've got with your animals in terms of they trust me and I trust them. So I they'll go into an area and and they know that we've given them the amount of feed that they're going to need for the time that they're in there, so they can go in and you know, I call it indiscriminately grazing. They just go in and eat everything that's there and they don't think about it, they just graze whatever's there and they know they can take absolutely everything out because as soon as they're hungry again or they've done their rumination, they've done their sort of process, then we'll they'll get access to the next lot. And you know, we still need to leave time for them to ruminate, they've still got to be a cow, they're you know, they've got to shit and piss and do what they've got to do, animal impact, they've got to ruminate. So at this point, we've sort of reached it where I'm happy with probably two to three moves a day. I think I haven't honestly gone to more than that. I've heard that you want to be really careful doing that in a beef situation, a lot different in a dairy where you can manage the response to that a lot differently. I think that two to three moves a day for us is a bit of a sweet spot. I've actually just finished reading a really interesting book by Jamie Alessandro around it's called the grazing clock. And so he talks about, you know, you've got the time, the rest period that we'd probably always been focused on in terms of how much rest the pasture's got before you get go back into it. Um he says a few other dimensions to it. There's the the rumination of the animal, there's actually the time of day that you're grazing the plant, which is um something we'd sort of learnt about from a soil health perspective. But, you know, when you think about a plant at 7 a.m. in the morning after it's been respiring all night is not the same as a plant at 2 p.m. in the afternoon when it's been photosynthesizing for five or six hours from a nutritional value. So that's you know, we want to optimize the time that we're harvesting plants after they've been photosynthesizing. Um, but you can't do all that at once. You've still, you know, the animal probably wants to eat for 12, 14 hours of the day as well. So you've got to allow the animal access to pasture for that time, but it needs to ruminate for a for a period of time as well. And the other thing that's just it's only just happened this last week. Um I'm just I'm part of a program in within Halter itself as a group that we're trialing the beef sort of analytics of it all. And it so it's giving us data. It's only about three or four days old now for me, but it's got the data of the animals when they're ruminating and when they're grazing, walking and resting. So I think over time, you know, give us a couple of months on using that data and you know, m imagine going forward a couple of years. We're gonna have some really important data there from an individual animal perspective, but also as a herd and a um, you know, which what's the optimum time? How far can we push the animals? How much time do they need to ruminate or not? And so I think that's gonna be really cool when we get to that. We're not, yeah, we haven't really got it yet. We've just I've seen it and looked at it, but I don't really know what any of the numbers mean yet.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, cool. And might be unfair, but I'll ask it anyway. If we it's just sort of pitched what two years out might look like, knowing what has changed between 2020 and now or whatever, like the attempts at 1090, what do you think? Like what do you see as the sort of next big game changes in in making your next leaps? Is it going to be in monitoring how they're going, or is it monitoring grass or yeah, you got any crystal ball moments?
SPEAKER_01It is a proper crystal ball of Verg at the moment. It's really it's like you throw AI into it as well of uh this analysing data. I had a a fella challenge me the other day about the satellite imagery and and you know, can we should we be using a drone or something like that to measure our pasture? I actually pushed back a little bit and said, I for me going and seeing how much paddock feed we've got's one of the most enjoyable things I like doing. I don't want that to become a waste of time, uh, if you know what I mean. So I you know, I if I could find a way to uh maybe in a drought you get a drone to do it, mate. Yeah, well, maybe. Yeah. Um so I mean, yeah, I think I think the analytics we're gonna get from Holter with the like rumination um grazing time, uh those animal performance things, I think that'll be really powerful. And that'll probably overlay with pasture budgeting on it. But I mean, we're only grazing, you know, 1.5 hectares a day type of thing. So you if if I was to get a machine to come in and pasture budget for us, it would have to be very accurate to do it better than what what we do because yeah, we can do it pretty good at the moment. Um, so uh yeah, I I wouldn't rule it out, but it'd have to be pretty bloody good. And I mean, the other thing is our cows are very good at partial budgeting because they'll soon let you know if they don't, you know, if you don't give them enough feed. And you know, last week I had that experience. We had our first probably cold couple of days for the year, and um, you know, 24 hours in, you could tell that they weren't I hadn't given them enough area. It was we're we're going that close to the line in terms of we needed to probably give them another 10 or 15 percent more area on a couple of those days because we'd had a couple of cold, wet days, and their intake had gone up on that, which is great. It's great to get that feedback straight away.
SPEAKER_00All good to be shifting cattle from a cafe and wagga waggamate. What is you've mentioned your temporary water or your movable water systems, what's that look like now? And is that does that become your Achilles heel or is um in terms of being on farm?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, a little a little bit. So I suppose um what I so we only had like two or three portable water troughs, um, which I used to move with the with the um Kiwi Tech. Uh instantly, you know, I found that that was going to be the wheat link. So we just I I used to have some stainless steel troughs that we'd had made up. I sort of got to that point where, you know, growing out yielding bulls, their number one aim is to break something. So we ended up we sort of remodeled the Kiwi Tech polytrough, and I'd made a stainless steel one, but I've actually the cows don't seem to give it a problem. So I've just used a yeah, just a hundred-litre polytrough. Um, and I've I ended up just going and buy another four of them with a little bit longer um hose. We used to have like a you know, eight to ten metre hose on it, and now I've just gone to 15 metres. That just gives me um a bit more um I can move it around the fix uh hydrant points. So, you know, on 380 hectares or 88 hectares, we've got 45 outlets on the farm, you know, yeah, within about 150, 200 metres of anywhere on the farm. So that gives a fair bit of flexibility. And now with the you know, with the main mob of cows, I can have probably four or five water troughs set up in in conjunction. And you know, you're usually going to get at least two, if not three days off each watering pint. So, you know, you could probably go seven days or so. I wouldn't want to go that long without sort of being there, but you know, or actually, as it turned out this morning, though, I'd been it actually ended up being five days that I hadn't been on the farm from this morning. We just came out of a long weekend here in Australia, so I wasn't there for them, but then I wasn't there for the two days before that either, which you know is um yeah, really great in a lot of ways to know that you're not losing, missing out on any production on the farm, and also you're there, you know, I'm doing probably more work in our business off the farm, that which is really important for me, you know, uh bull clients or or the meat business side of it. So in that, you know, being able to know that you duck off for a long weekend too without um you know impacting too much on what's going on on the farms, really cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I guess because like if a cow's not moving, you'll be alerted. So it's sort of you're not it's not like you're not monitoring welfare at the same time.
SPEAKER_01No, that's right. Yeah, so I've got no qualms with that. And you know, we didn't our stock water system is is really good. Um we've got some monitoring on that to keep an eye on what's going on there. So very confident that we're not going to have issues. But yeah, on the app as such, it shows up. Um, you know, if the cattle are if they if they ran out of water, you'd you'd soon know about it because they're they'd um they'd be milling around around and carrying on. You know, I can look at them uh on the app at any point in time, and now we can actually look to see, you know, are they walking, are they ruminating? Uh, you know, that that's pretty cool information to be able to um to get. That's really only happened in the last week, but still it's from a peace of mind. I was probably thinking, look, do I need to get some remote monitoring or that type of thing? But because we can hook up, you know, five or six hydrants in a row, um, you'd end up probably needing a monitoring on various of the watering points. And I think I don't think we'll actually end up doing that now. It becomes it's pretty expensive, a lot of that technology as well. So, and uh, you know, the worst thing you we want is technology that's unreliable. Um, so uh the the collars themselves have been incredibly good like that. We've had the odd one come off, um, but very few. I've got I've got one animal in there, main mobile cows at the moment, that she's uh her collar uh she busted the pin on it the other day, which is what it's designed to do. She she got a head caught on a uh on a stick in the paddock and um it broke free, which was what was meant to happen. Um, and then you know you get the alert saying, well, that collar's not moving. And I went out there, you know, the next day, and sure enough, she was 100 metres out doing the old creep graze type of thing. She'll be the fattest car in the mob soon, but her collar was back at the tree where it had broken off. And look for me, realistically, next time they come near the yards, I'll just stick another collar on her. Um, I'm not gonna do a special trip for that, but um, they'll come back at some point. We're gonna have to adjust the collars on the young stock, probably, you know, in a month, I reckon. We w pushed the boundaries with the when we weaned in terms of the age of the animals that we put them on. But through our grazing management, I knew that we needed to get them under control. Uh, initially we just did the cows, and that wasn't we it wasn't working as well the first month we had the holder collars because we had calves that were just doing whatever, and they were going ahead and we run a pretty tight ship in terms of our replacement heifers run back with their cows uh uh only up. They sort of wean them for about a fortnight in a mob of weaners, and then we put them back in there. Um, and those animals need to like it's a bit of an ask in the modern system for those heifers to grow out in there, but we we want them to put them under that pressure. Um, we've been doing it for long enough now that those they do get through and join up well. Suppose the upside to having mature cow weight of 500 kilos is you know, your your heifer getting joined at 15 months of age has probably only got to be, you know, she doesn't have to be 300 really. Um so we've got a bit of uh um leniency with that. So yeah, that that part of it sort of works pretty well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's gonna be intriguing as we go forward with these sort of technologies, virtual fencing and the sensor-based, like that knowledge, whether they're ruminating, grazing, walking, whatever. And I think maybe like the power is probably as yet unknown. Like you'll start to see patterns in your in your data and what the pasture's done and what the dung's done and the whole yeah, it'll be interesting as that goes forward as you start to the subconscious brain will do a pretty good job of working out some patterns that that will help you determine when you shift those fences and stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think I think so. It'll be I'm just keen to collect the data at this stage, do what we're doing. You know, I said to this to the holder lady, like, I was really pleased that we knew how to graze before we got into the technology of the collar. Like, I I you know, like anything, it's a tool and it can be used really well or it could be used really badly. And I get really anxious around people thinking, oh look, we've got this shiny new thing, it's going to fix all our problems. You know, it won't really grow you any more grass unless you know how to manage it in the first place. Uh and I think the education piece around how to graze and how to manage your grass, how to budget your grass, how many animals in that period of uh in that area for that period of time, you know, those things are still the fundamentals that are really important. We've just sort of turbocharged a little bit with a bit of glitzy technology, but the principles behind it, there'd be no way I'd be sort of saying that you know the technology is so great at the moment because it's only because we know how to do it and you know, feel pretty confident we had the runs on the board in the first place. Um, but I do get anxious around it. And you know, I think the um the should be flung back on on the grazing system probably rather than the technology in a lot of ways if it fails a bit, which you know, I'm probably used to that a little bit, but I get a little bit anxious around that. Um see what happens, I suppose. But it's a pretty exciting space, so all the same.
SPEAKER_00How long did it take you to kind of get that grazing system in your head? Like, was that a couple year process to get good at knowing when to shift the wire?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was, and I think you've got to make a few mistakes. Uh Terry Mikoska teaches a uh a concept about untoward acceleration, and it basically is around you know, you think a paddock's gonna have 20 days' rest and you get there in 18, and then you know, and you keep going faster, and the next time you get there in 10, and the next, you know, and all of a sudden you end up getting there and your heads up your own ass. That's how he describes it. And I think everyone who does this has to experience that um realistically. I had the you know privilege of experiencing that in 2016, and it it you know probably cost our business $150,000, $200,000. And that was probably four or five years into me doing it, and I felt like I knew what I was doing, and then I made a ripe stuff up. Um, and so I had the you know, sort of embarrassment, the financial impact and and the ecological impact on it as well. But you know, some people mightn't uh have to learn the hard way. I sort of had to learn that the hard way and since then became pretty cautious around it. Um uh I wouldn't underestimate the you know, I'm really privileged. I'm in a management group with, you know, there's eight other families, and we meet about every six weeks. That support network of having people around you like that to, you know, even just four people to go and do a pasture budget, like you know, you stand there, how many square meters is uh we're gonna need a DSE for a day type of thing? Do that in two or three paddocks. You know, it's not uncommon to get three different answers from four different people, like sort of thing. And and you're all it's not like you don't know what's going on, but just great getting in someone else's paddock or having other people in your paddock um and just sharing that knowledge and understanding. I feel that part of it is really, really important. Um, you know, and I th I would sort of call some of these, hopefully, some of the companies that are selling these products can offer some of that sort of support and the after after-sale service type of thing um to to help people implementing some of these changes if they're going to do that, because I think it's a really, really important part of it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you made a good point before around kind of the technology and these sort of technologies. If they free up your time, it means you're working on the business, so you've got more time for kind of doing that discussion group type stuff and and chat, yeah. Like you if you're flat out rolling up polywire and shifting troughs and stuff, yeah, yeah, it's stuff that you can't get done. So really interesting, mate, and um yeah, looking forward to seeing further insights as you continue down that that journey. One thing we're gonna ask on this podcast each time is the best piece of advice you've received.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, great question. Um I think I've received a lot of advice, but I think probably it'd be trust your instinct, I think. Um, and that's probably in in in two parts. It's trust your own judgment and the support that you've got around you, but also trust your intuition, uh, and you know, that gut feeling piece. Um I I've made a couple of big mistakes in our business over the years, and and I know two of them in particular I can pinpoint that I didn't have a good feeling about the decision that I'd made, and I'd actually ignored it. And you know, hindsight comes and whacks you, um, and you think, geez, I wish I had paid more attention to that at the time. And now I'm you know very much in in tune with with that in terms of my intuition and you know my my gut feel of on making a decision, almost too much now. Basically, that's what I go to straight out. And um, but I think yeah, recognising that is is so important. And I I suppose also I I don't want to underestimate that, you know, just having a group of people that, you know, one, two, five, something like that, that you can just talk to on the phone or or face to face um and share an idea or a thought um with you. I think that's really really important, especially when you're doing things that aren't, you know, necessarily straight down the line, or you know, there mightn't be a lot of people around doing it. So being able to pick the brains of someone who genuinely understands what you're trying to do and and how you're trying to do it, I think's really important.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. Thanks, mate. We better leave it there. But yeah, great to hear your story and great to hear that technology being utilized out out there, and uh yeah, we'll look forward to catching up soon.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can guarantee you'll be more talk about it. It's not this is it's gonna be a runaway train in a lot of ways. Yeah, I think. But um be really interesting to see how it pans out into the future.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, indeed. Thanks, mate. Cheers. And that's a wrap on another episode. Thanks for listening. We truly hope you got something out of it. Head over to the MLA website for tools and resources to help you be at your best. Links are in the show notes. If you're after some more listening, I also host the Head Shepherd podcast, where we go deep on genetics and livestock management. Search for Head Shepherd wherever you're listening to this. See you next episode.