A corral full of Brahman cattle in Larry’s Lake paddock on Victoria River Downs Cattle Station, which covers 3,900 sq km with almost 33,000 cattle scattered across a lease established in 1883.
Cattle ranching is very seasonal in the Northern Territory, with most of the non-sealed roads unusable during the wet season from December through March, when the cattle are left in near-wild conditions to graze on the abundant fresh grass, and the stations have only a skeleton crew of caretakers. You can maintain a healthy herd on a well-run cattle station while selling about 1/3 of the livestock yearly. They sell 2-year-old cattle, keeping the most desirable young females, the unproductive old females, and all the male calves. The bulls are bought from off-station to keep them genetically mixed and are vaccinated against venereal diseases, and all adult cattle are vaccinated against botulism. Approx 3 bulls per hundred cows. The mustering is done so that they can go through the herd to separate the one-year-old “weaners” from their mothers, all the weaners will be branded and given ear tags, and the males will be castrated. They will do a pregnancy test on all the cows, and pull out the old, unproductive females and all the 2-year-old calves for the live export market.
- Filename
- STNMTZ_20230602_2194.TIF
- Copyright
- ©2023 George Steinmetz
- Image Size
- 6008x4000 / 68.8MB
- www.georgesteinmetz.com
- Contained in galleries
