By ERWIN CHLANDA
Wally Klein, of Orange Creek cattle station, paid $19,000 at this morning’s Show Sale, well over double the average price for the day.
“We never paid that much for a bull before. We bought a lot of bulls for $10,000,” he says.
“The bull is just the cheapest investment in your cattle.”
He says beef prices have been very high.
Mr Klein with grand-daughter Annabelle Nelson and his son Jacob.
“They slipped a little bit but I think that’s only short term. Obviously we sold a lot of cattle last year for really high prices so we put a bit back into our herd.”
Orange Creek’s green circular lucerne patches (Google Earth photo below), on the Stuart Highway 91 km south of Alice Springs, are a surprising sight for airline passengers flying between Singapore and Sydney.
Mr Klein has 100 hectares under the perennial flowering plant, also called alfalfa.
He says it is now irrigated entirely with solar powered bores, pumping 40 litres a second “with the sun.
“It’s really fantastic,” he says.
The bull, a Poll Hereford, also judged the Bull of the Show, came from Tom Honner’s Minlacowie stud of JJ Honner & Sons in Minlaton, SA.
The second bull entered by the stud was judged the second champion of the show.
The average price for the sale of the 13 head was $8576.
There were seven Poll Herefords, including five from Days Whiteface in Bordertown SA, and six Droughtmasters from Hale River Homestead east of Alice Springs.
The Poll Herefords averaged $11,571 and the Droughtmasters $5083.
