The opportunity to compete in stud beef judging at Beef 2024 will be a much anticipated first-time experience for South Australian Simmental bull breeders, Quentin and Renee Mooney.

Renee Mooney

The couple’s Mt Mooney Simmental Stud based at Talbara, near Tintinara in SA’s southeast corner will make its debut this year in the nation’s largest stud beef display during May.

Around 1800 stud cattle representing more than 30 breeds are nominated to judging over two days.

Keen to explore new markets for their Simmental bulls, the Mooneys for the past three years have sold a run of bulls in Central Queensland. This year they are vendors in a new sale involving five southern Simmental studs being held at Gracemere at the end of July.

“We already had 13 bulls heading North on a truck for this year’s new sale, so we thought, why don’t we make the trip worthwhile and exhibit some cattle at the Beef Expo as well?” Renee said.

“We’ve never been to the Beef Expo before, but have obviously heard a lot about it – we can’t wait for the experience,” she said.

By road, the transport distance from the Tintinara region to Rockhampton is around 2600km, with a spell half-way at Dubbo en route. The Mt Mooney sale and show cattle, along with cattle from two other southern studs, made the trip some months ago to acclimatise at JJ Fitting Service near Gracemere.

The Mt Mooney show team for Rocky are 12 months younger than the sale bulls in the same consignment. They are all embro transfer calves out of the stud’s leading donor cow. The calves will continue to be shown on the Queensland Show circuit by JJ Fitting Service for the remainder of this year, possibly ending up in Brisbane in August, before being prepared locally as sale bulls for next year’s Queensland Simmental Bull Sale.

So why go to all the time, effort and expense to bring show cattle half-way across the continent?

“We see plenty of opportunity for Simmental genetics in commercial herds in Northern Australia, and this is a great showcase,” Quentin said.

“Our previous sale bulls have gone into big Brahman, Santa and Droughtmaster type herds, across as far as Boulia, south of Mt Isa close to the Northern Territory border,” he said.

Several years ago the Mooneys put a couple of bulls on the southern show circuit, picking up seconds and thirds at the Sydney Royal Simmental feature show. Locally, the couple are not dedicated stud beef exhibitors, but do a couple of regional SA shows just to get the bulls used to the show-ring environment, picking up first and seconds in their classes.

“Having never been to a Rocky Beef Expo before, we’re really looking forward to the experience. We’ve heard so much about it, and can’t wait.”

“In a lot of ways, having the Rocky Beef Expo on just a couple of months before our new Queensland Simmental sale is a great promotional opportunity for our cattle. It couldn’t have fallen better, time-wise.”

• See Eric Barker’s earlier report on another long-distance stud beef exhibitor heading to Beef 2024 next month.