Shorthorns triumph in RNA's paddock to palate HGP free class

The Morgan family of The Grove Shorthorns, Condamine, took out this year's class 40a, best weight gain for pen of six HGP free steers, with their pure Shorthorn steers recording an average daily weight gain of 2.452 kilograms.

Sires of these steers include The Grove Chainlink Q965, The Grove Major R0085, Turanville Informer P85 & Turanville Crusher Q92.

The Grove Shorthorns were one of the top performing exhibitors in class 40, with their 14 Shorthorn steers finishing with an average daily weight gain of 2.2kg.

Shorthorns were the top performing breed in class 40, which had 14 entries from The Grove Shorthorns, with an average induction weight of 443kg and an average exit weight of 663kg.

Spencer Morgan emphasised the importance of the competition in benchmarking their herd's performance in the beef industry.

"We believe this competition is the best of these trials run around the country and has been from the start," Mr Morgan said.

"The beauty of it is that it takes all the feeding bias out of it and the cattle are fed together, slaughtered together, which is basically how we've always looked at it.

"It's a really good competition to benchmark where you're sitting in the beef industry.

The Morgans entered four pens of steers, two pens in class 40, one pen in class 38 one pen in class 37.

While Mr Morgan said it was always great to win the early weight gain phase of the competition, he said they eagerly awaited the carcase judging.

"While the weight gain is very important, so is hitting the specs when they're hanging up," he said.

The Morgans focus on breeding cattle that can achieve significant weight gains naturally, without hormonal growth promoters (HGP), while still meeting market specifications for quality carcases.

"That's the market we breed for as that's our target market and as a whole, we try breed cattle with enough beef on them," Mr Morgan said.

"We focus on breeding the beast that is capable of putting on those kilograms without the assistance. Obviously they're never going to put on quite as much without it, but you can still have a very good quality carcase at the end.

"History will show the important role Shorthorns have played in the Australian beef industry."

Mr Morgan said the steers selected for this competition were out of performance recorded dams.

"Our breeding programs are all performance recorded, so we know what size and what dams are capable of," he said.

"We just try and take the guesswork out of it and that's what we try and do for our clients.

"It's all about helping our clients hit the market specs more often. That's what our role as seedstock producers, breed the cattle that will help them it those market specs right."