Castrating, de-horning, branding, ear-marking, and ear-tagging young calves on Wave Hill Cattle Station. The station is made up of two leases (Wave Hill and Cattle Creek) established in 1883, with a combined area of over 3 million acres (12,804 sq km or 4,942 sq mi) and 40,000 cattle. The homestead is about 10km off the paved Buntine Highway and about 30km from the township of Kalkarindji.
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 of 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 sort 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 of the cows, and pull out the old unproductive females and all the 2-year-old calves for the live export market.
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- ©2023 George Steinmetz
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- www.georgesteinmetz.com
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