Beales bulk buy for budding stud herd in Mackay region post cancer battle

They first started building their herd in 2019 but had to pause while Ms Beale underwent intensive cancer treatment twice.

"I spent a long time in hospital. Looking at Brahman cattle and learning about the breed kept me going, so it's very special for us," Ms Beale said.

"It's been a bit of a long road with other issues jumping in but we're full steam ahead now."

They most recently purchased 15 heifers at the February All Breeds Bull and Female Sale on Monday, varying in price from $3000 to $18,000, with a gross total of $78,000, averaging $5200.

They also purchased the top price heifer on the day, lot 110, MCL Mythos, catalogued by Craig and Jodi McLennan, MCL stud, Goovigen.

The 25-month-old grey, polled scurred female was sired by Elanora Park Elamo and out of MCL Highlights 1597.

Other notable recent purchases included seven females at Big Country, four at Great Northern, and two at the PB Fenech sale.

"We're wanting to increase our herd and numbers. Between last year and this year I think we've bought between 60 and 80 females," Ms Beale said.

"We're trying to stick with a polled herd, but we do like the horned influence still to keep the structure within our cattle. We're buying both horned and double polled females and males."

"We're putting some horned bulls over PP females and we do also put PP females and males together, we're just having a go at different lines and just seeing how it goes."

Their commercial herd of about 70 head features mainly recipient females used for artificial breeding, but they have also been focused on improving the quality of those animals.

"Most of them were brought in with Brahman influence, and we have a bit of Speckle Park influence in there, which we've found are quite fertile," Ms Beale said.

"We've calving out natural calves at the moment, which should finish in the next two weeks, and then we'll start calving out embryos for the next two months."

The recent purchases will help replenish their female numbers after a big drop of bull calves.

"We weren't really looking at buying too many females but unfortunately for us we've just had a lot of bull calves," Ms Beale said.

They have five bulls in total between two properties in the Mackay region, but have also been buying in a lot of semen to expand on their genetics. They said they were also looking into running an AI program shortly.

A lot of the property they own is irrigated, growing crops and silage, with forage sorghum in at the moment.

Influenced by friends and clients in the stud game, their business, Waterdrill Australia, has allowed them to get in the position to purchase land and start their passion project for in later life.

"We call it our hobby because our business is where our focus is, but this is a beautiful break for us," Ms Beale said.

Mr Beale comes from a family of commercial cattle breeders, breeding mainly Herefords and Shorthorns, while Ms Beale comes from sugarcane, but has worked with cattle throughout her life.

Ms Beale said they fell in love with Brahman cattle due to their intelligence and temperament, and have chosen to stick to breeding grey Brahmans for now.