THE Howard family has been very happy with their business decision to make the switch to a black Brangus herd, having worked closely with stud breeders to help achieve their long-term goals of breeding and producing high quality cattle for the market.

Mark and Simone Howard run the business (which has been EU accredited for 21 years) under the banner of The Bottletree Cattle Trust with their children Nicola, Andrew, Jack, and Kristina. Mr Howard, a fifth generation grazier, established the business in 1985.

Mr Howard purchased Kianga Station, Moura in 2000. The family's other breeding enterprise, Woontonvale Station, at Gumlu in Qld, 57 kms north of Bowen was purchased in 2016. They recently sold their other property, Karalee Plains at Wandoan, Qld.

The Howards started to improve their herd in 2015 by buying black Brangus bulls and breeding a Brangus heifer for herd improvement and to enter the southern markets chasing a flatback beast for feeder cattle.

"Feedlots are chasing Brangus as they're efficient with weight gains and dress out well. Our markets are very flexible as  we can sell our Brangus cattle to grow out on grass or into feedlots and they can be sold from North Queensland to southern Australia."

He said their older cows are mainly a mixture of Brahmans and Droughtmaster, and the calves end up as 80 per cent black flatback polled, Brangus cattle.

"Our replacement heifers coming through are a very nice line of stock. This has lifted our calving percentage and overall production. They're usually fertile at 280 to 300kg as well."

They've found Brangus females to be very good mothers.

"Generally we've had fewer calving problems, and good milk production. They've shown that they can handle the  conditions of North Queensland, as our pregnancy, calving and weaning rates have improved significantly."

The Howards join their bulls for four months, which is longer than most. "We do this to allow for our bigger paddocks at Woontonvale and for picking up fertility in the first-year heifers after weaning.""

In a usual season they've been holding cattle for the feeder market from 380kgs to 420kgs.

"Due to drought, we were selling them a lot lighter to handle the feed situation, and the prices were very good. As we've sold Karalee Plains, which was our main backgrounding property, we're going to soon be selling weaners out of the paddock at Kianga and Woontonvale."

Kianga consists of 3157ha of improved pastures, and black soil Downs country with 1012ha of Leucaena. It's good backgrounding country, set up as a rotational grazing operation. on which they're currently carrying 900 breeders. Woontonvale is 18,500ha and is a mixture of light and heavy coastal country with marine plains country carrying 3500 head of breeders.

"We're currently developing the rotational grazing operation, cleaning up weeds and regenerating pastures, while setting up cultivations for growing cattle fodder and cropping to drought proof our operation.

"We intend to feed cattle in October to February during our driest months to alleviate the protein deficiencies during this period."