Kidman Springs Field Day a hit

Whitney  Dollemore, Pastoral Research Officer, Katherine

The biennial Victoria River  Research Station (Kidman Springs) field day was held in conjunction with Meat  and Livestock Australia (MLA) Beef Up forum on the 15-16 August 2018. The field  day was well attended by 70 pastoralists and other industry stakeholders. The  Kidman field day program highlighted a number of rangeland and cattle  production topics including:

  • burning regimes for controlling woody  thickening on a small and property scale incorporating grazing strategies
  • self-herding  principles and philosophy
  • Senepol  crossbreeding
  • genetic  selection
  • donkey  research
  • calf  loss
  • post  weaning heifer growth
  • putting  weight on cull cows profitably
  • phosphorus  supplementation
  • telemetry
  • telecommunication  possibilities and;
  • managing post mortems.

There was a practical  demonstration of ovarian scanning and a station tour which was noted as the  best part by the attendees!

On the second day the MLA Beef Up  was held with complementary talk topics. There were presentations following on  from genetic selection and the future with genomics, the current and future  state of the live export market, the power of individual animal identification  as well as a productive MLA priority setting and Update session.

All feedback was extremely  supportive of the research that is taking place at Kidman Springs and we look  forward to another jam packed field day in 2020.

Figure 3: Attendees listening to Tim Schatz from DPIR   present results on the Senepol cross-breeding project.  Figure 4: Elizabeth Stedman and Ayrial Foster from DPIR gave a hands-on demonstration on how to perform an autopsy, what tissue samples to collect and how to collect them.  
Figure 3: Attendees listening to Tim Schatz from DPIR   present results on the Senepol cross-breeding project.Figure 4: Elizabeth Stedman and Ayrial Foster from DPIR gave a hands-on demonstration on how to perform an autopsy, what tissue samples to collect and how to collect them.

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