Resilience and readiness all part of the recipe

Over the past eight years, NSW cattle producers Matthew and Angela Pearce have steered their enterprise on a journey of change, weathering their fair share of challenges along the way.

Looking back to 2013 – the year which marked the start of many of their on-farm adjustments, Matthew and Angela Pearce had just completed succession planning with Matthew’s family.

Matthew had been involved in the family farm prior to this, but the couple discovered that running their own entity was a different proposition.

To assist in their transition, the Pearces applied to participate in the inaugural MLA Challenge, in 2013-14. The 12-month Challenge offered six producers the chance to utilise MLA’s tools, resources and advice to transform their farming business.

“We thought it would be a good opportunity to learn some skills and get an understanding of the options we should be considering for our business,” Matt said.

The Challenge gave them the opportunity to scrutinise every aspect of their business, clarify their business goals and formulate a plan to get there.

Strategic grazing systems

The Pearces’ grazing operation at Adelong on the NSW south west slopes focuses on a self-replacing breeding herd of Angus-Hereford cattle, joined to Angus bulls. They have a relationship with a Queensland feedlot to supply steers and also background cattle.

“During the MLA Challenge, we moved from a set stocking system to what I call a strategic grazing system,” Matt said.

While it’s not a full rotational system, across a 12-month period all their grazing country receives a three-month rest.

“By monitoring our species composition and resting our pastures, we wanted to see whether there was a change in our feed base and an increase in perenniality.

“The subsequent increase in deeper-rooted perennials has given us a longer growing season, better ground cover and better water use efficiency.”

Narrowing the calving window

Another major change the Pearces implemented as a result of their participation in the MLA Challenge was to tighten their calving window, a process that took longer than anticipated.

“I went really hard,” Matt said.

“We brought it down from a 12-week joining to a four-week joining initially, because we had enough females that we thought we could do it.

“But after about two or three years of doing that, we started running out of females. We were losing so many on the bottom end of that joining, or they weren't going into calf.”

They now have a six-week joining window and this year, experienced their best result to date.

“It’s taken a while, but this year we had a 94% PTIC in our cows and 78% with our heifers,” he says.

Fixed-time AI

In the years following the MLA Challenge, the Pearces ran a fixed-time AI program, partly to tighten up the joining and push as many heifers as possible into the first cycle.

However, during those seasonally-challenging years, the pregnancy rates weren’t as high as they needed to be, and they abandoned the practice.

However, Matt hasn’t discounted reinstating it.

“It was just too much, too soon. For a couple of years, we still had enough heifers coming into the system, but then we had some bull failures and some tough seasons on top of that. Our female numbers dropped right back, but I think we might get a better result now.”

Fire devastation

Those difficult seasons turned out to be the precursor to the period of devastation wrought by the black summer fires of 2019 – 2020.

When the massive Dunns Road fire started on 31 December 2019 near Adelong and spread through the region, 95% of the Pearce’s property was burnt out.

“We lost a shed full of hay and all our pasture base,” Matt says.

Incredibly, they didn’t lose their house, any stock or machinery, which Matt credits in part to their practice of an annual insurance review every November.

During this annual process, timed around when they have a clearer idea of how the fire danger season is shaping up, the Pearces knew the 2019-20 summer would be a high fire risk. So, they had already moved their machinery to a part of the property where it would be easiest to protect or away from heavily timbered country.

Coming into the 2019 summer on the back of few tough seasons, their stocking rate was a little lower than normal.

They had preg-tested all joined females and had forward sold empty females for a January delivery.

Once the Dunns Road fire started, Matt mustered the animals into a paddock adjacent to the house, which required moving them through areas of burnt ground.

He suspected there were some livestock he hadn’t been able to reach and dreaded the worst – but when he went out and checked after the fire and found the remaining cattle uninjured, he recalls throwing himself onto the ground and almost crying with relief.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” he said.

Following the fire, all the stock the Pearces were able to deliver their forward-sold stock early. They moved pregnant females to leased country in Cootamundra. This freed the property of stock after the fire to give their pasture base the best chance to recover.

“Without stock, we had more free time to consider what we needed to do,” Angela said.

“We set ourselves a goal that within 12 months we would have everything back as close as possible to where we were before.”

They completed their refencing program before Christmas 2020 and have now also put water systems back in place.

While the layout of the property worked reasonably well prior to the fire, they too the opportunity to restructure fences and add laneways to improve safety and efficiency.

With help from Local Land Services (LLS), Matt and Angela have been able to replant some of the tree plantations that were lost in the fire.

“LLS and every agency, all levels of government and the community – the support right across was just amazing,” Angela said.

“At the time you’re in a fog and just trying to get through, but it was quite amazing to see there was that much care for the people that went through it.”

Now that things are returning to normal, Matt is reinvigorated to promote the beef industry he is so passionate about.

In the past, he has travelled to the US on an MLA-hosted tour to share his perspective as a producer to chefs, food critics and social influencers. Matt and Angela have also hosted visiting chefs and food critics on-farm to provide an insight into Australian livestock production.

“I’m a big believer in the industry and we've always got an open-door policy here,” Matt said. “We're proud that we’re producing food that everyone needs. It's something that we are happy to share.”