Meat and Livestock Australia

16 Property and business development In addition to Orana, Huntingfield Station was purchased in late 2016, allowing the enterprise to expand by 7,335 ha and an anticipated 1,500 does. This increase in scale also complemented John’s plans to move closer to the major center of Mildura as he begins considering the early stages of succession. John’s son Shane has also returned to the region to begin developing his own goat enterprise. While Shane doesn’t play an active role in the running of John’s business, he helps out when additional labour is needed, such as doing stock work. Due to John’s reduced work load since major infrastructure developments on Orana were completed in 2013, he now has the time to begin developing an additional property. With 30 years’ experience running goats on Orana, John is able to implement lessons learnt from day one on Huntingfield. On Orana, the majority of fencing involves 6/70/30 hinge-joint which was often attached to existing fences. This has withstood the test of time and John feels it does a suitable job at containing goats. Paddock sizes on Orana vary with water availability, but larger paddocks are generally around 1,600 ha. John has more recently began using 8/90/30 hinge- joint with a barb clipped to the bottom wire and above the top wire as he believes this is most effective at controlling movement of goats and feral animals. This fence design is being used on all internal fencing at Huntingfield, while the boundary will be built to a more exclusion type standard. This is in order to minimise invasion from kangaroos and emus. It involves 1800 mm fence height, seven metre post spacing, 2,400 mm posts used one in three, 8/90/15 hinge-joint with a barb run along the bottom wire, three barbed and three plain wires above the hinge-joint (placed from the hinge-joint up as barb, plain, barb, barb plain, plain). Development plans on Huntingfield also involve a laneway system to allow ease of stock movement. A pipeline will supply stock water to troughs and at least two water points will be established per paddock in order to spread grazing pressure. Back on Orana, dams have been cleaned out in recent years and stock scales were purchased. John points out that scales have been valuable in being able to load trucks without risk of being overloaded. They have also allowed him to gain a better understanding of the weight lost through curfew and carcass yield. John Vagg inspecting his newly constructed exclusion fence on Huntingfield Station boundary Exclusion fence design on Huntingfield Station boundary