A day at Springvale
Host: Yeeda Pastoral Co.
Written by – Vicki Burton, Owner, Yeeda Pastoral Co.
Yeeda Pastoral Company purchased Springvale Aggregation from E G Greens (Harvey Beef) in 2003. Springvale was once owned by the legendary stockman Tom Quilty, from 1948 to 1978, Tom and his wife Olive built the homestead as it is today.
These days Dave is our manager at Springvale along with a great crew of hard workers. Springvale, Alice, Mabel, and Texas combined is a spread of approx 1.5 million acres. The other properties are all managed from Springvale.
Springvale Homestead.
Tom Quilty memorial.
The mustering is pretty much done for this year out at Springvale, most of the cattle have been through the yards, the sale and cull animals trucked to Kilto, the weaners weaned from their mothers and the breeders turned back out with any calves at foot.
Normally all our weaners are trucked to Alice where they are handled and then put out into paddocks, but as it has been so dry this year we have had to spread them to parts of the property where there is enough feed.
Earlier this year Dave and the crew did a portable muster in the Bungle Bungles national park, the photo below is of some of the locals!
Mustering at Mabel.
Bungle Locals.
Portable Yards (click to enlarge).
The guys are now flat out keeping up with waters. It has been one of the driest years since we have owned the place. A lot of our bores are having supply issues with the water table dropping. We still have the old faithful windmill at some waters and are slowly changing over to solar powered pumping systems.
At the moment it is very dry and hot and the pressure is on to make sure all the waters are pumping and keeping up with the demands of the cattle.
Through the year after the rain there are a lot of natural waters and springs so the cattle tend to spread out as they know they can get a drink at various places. But as the natural waters dry up the cattle come back on to the man made waters, this puts the pressure on to make sure everything is working as it should be.
Paddock to Plate!
No. 7 Bore.
We are looking forward to the first storms for the wet season to bring some relief to man and cattle. Rain means fresh feed and plentiful waters (and time off!). The BOM site (Bureau of Meteorology radar weather site) gets a good work out this time of the year as we look out for storms, ever hopeful!
After the rain.
Time off for a swim.