THE Underwood family of Riveren and Inverway in the Victoria District are some of the pioneers of the Northern Territory cattle industry.
They wean around 5000 steers a year, and in 2004 purchased Midway Station, between Katherine and Darwin, to grow the majority of their 14 to 18-month-old steers to shipping weights over the wet season.
Midway is run by Chris and Marie Muldoon, who transformed the 1500 hectares of productive red sandy loam soils on the 3000ha property into a finishing factory by implementing a cell grazing system that keeps good feed in front of the young cattle at all times.
The red soils grow buffel, jarrah, sabi grass and the legume Wynn cassia.
The existing paddocks were subdivided into 30 cells, each of 50ha by a single electrified wire, supported by a star picket every 30 metres and a single strainer post at each end, as it is the electricity in the wire that keeps the cattle under control.
The steers arrive at Midway in November/December at an average weight of 250kg, with the aim of adding 90kg to 100kg to them during the wet season.
When they first arrive, due to compensatory growth, they put on up to 1kg/day, and although that can drop to 300 grams/day during monsoonal weather, over the wet season they average 0.8kg/day.
The entire mob is run together, and during the height of the growing season, they are moved to the next paddock every day, having only consumed the top growth of the pasture.
As there are 30 paddocks in the cell, it takes the mob a month to return to the original paddock.
That enables the pasture to regrow, enlarge its root system and crowd woody weeds.
Weed control is also helped by the grazing pressure, which although there are only two beasts/hectare overall, when there are 3000 steers in a 50ha paddock, the pressure is actually 60 steers/hectare and that eliminates their habit of selective grazing.
Consequently, in the wet season they also eat some of the sida, the main problem woody weed.
That has resulted in a reduction of 75 percent in the amount of herbicide needed to control the weed - a saving of $33,000 a year - and as the pasture density improves over time, Mr Muldoon hopes to eventually eliminate sida altogether.
Spelling each paddock for 30 days has also eliminated cattle ticks; however, buffalo fly is still a problem and is kept at bay by the use of ear tags, with the active ingredient changed each year to prevent resistance developing.
The steers are weighed every month and dung samples are taken for near infrared reflective spectroscopy analysis (NIRS), which determines the protein level of the pasture, and when it drops it is corrected by water medication.
That is administered by a Nutridose unit sourced from Brisbane-based Pastoral and Feedlot Systems, with the nutrient solution containing urea, phosphate and sulphur at a cost of 5-10 cents/head/day depending on the amount of nutrient it contains.
The property is ideally suited to that type of supplementation, as there is no surface water and the steers run in one mob and water from a single trough.
So only one Nutridose unit was needed, and the unit and its 3600-litre nutrient tank are mounted on a trailer which follows the steers from paddock to paddock and trough to trough.
Since implementing the intensive grazing system, the stocking rate has been increased by 50 percent and the NIRS results show no fertiliser is needed by the pasture, which was costing $130/ha before the cell grazing system was introduced.
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