Few people in Australia would be more familiar with British White cattle than Simon and Lee Gore, and after more than three decades of farming them, and 25 years as Secretary of the British White Cattle Society of Australia, Lee’s affection and respect for the breed continues to shine through.
Lee and husband Simon operate Eltham Vale and Yandilla Studs, on the Darling Downs, at Clifton, between Toowoomba and Warwick in south-east Queensland.
Their property, ‘Mt Pleasant’, is a sloping 400 acres of sandy loam on the upside, down to black soil on the floodplain. It’s fertile country, good for grain growing (especially barley and sorghum), forage cropping for grazing and haymaking, “as long as you’ve got some land to get them off the black soil, because too much rain can see that soil get very sticky and boggy”. Actually the cattle make their way to the gate and ‘moo’ to get through to higher ground” Lee says.
On average, they run 100 head – 60 British White and 40 Murray Grey bulls, cows and heifers and their crosses– and “the usual menagerie” of sheep, chooks and a few pigs. They have varying grades of cattle and their Australian Purebred bulls are highly sought after.
Eltham Vale Stud began in 1995 with some crossbreeding and a few purchases when stock could be found, and Yandilla Stud was started in 2008.
But Lee’s familiarity with cattle goes back well before that: “I’ve had cows in my life ever since I could walk,” she says. Her parents had two dairy farms and a commercial beef enterprise and she was rather obsessed with cows. When we’d go to the local show, I would always head off to have a look at the dairy cattle and beef cattle judging”.
She still milks her own British White cows and gets “up close and personal to them”. Lee fondly says “perhaps one of their most appealing traits is that their individual personalities really show through”. “They’re easy to get close to, and when you look at them and talk to them, their lovely eyes melt you.”
Some of their British Whites never leave the farm. A grand old dam in their herd, Eltham Vale Chadea, a first cross, is coming up to 25 years old. Lee brings her into the shed at night to get out of the weather. “I’ve told her she’s not going anywhere”, because there’s a lot of her progeny here in our stud that just come from that particular cow. So many in fact that Lee is running out of names beginning with “CH”.
Lee left the land to become a teacher but when their children arrived, the Gores decided that they’d better go and get a plot of land, “so that the kids had somewhere to run and have animals”, and they got back into the cattle.
They started with Murray Greys in 1998. British Whites caught their eye while they were out on a property looking to add to the Murray Grey herd. Intrigued, they investigated this ‘new breed’ only to find out that it was “a very old UK breed with an interesting history, and that it needed conserving in Australia”.
They took on the British Whites in a gradual way, partly because stock was limited and importing problematic, and they wanted to test the waters. Over time they began to appreciate how much the breed’s attributes would benefit their breeding program.
“They are great mothers. The cows hold their milk right up to weaning time and the breed can handle drought times quite adequately, losing a lot less condition than the Murray Greys” Lee says. “Calves also wean well in that they don’t suffer much of a setback after parting ways with their mothers.”
Rather than growing their steers and heifers out for sale or lot-feeding, they wean their calves between 6-9 months depending upon the season and sell them and other excess stock at the Warwick saleyards. They also sell privately, straight from the farm.
“Even though we have studs we have always operated on a commercial basis, with fertility the number one priority, and we rarely have empty cows,” Lee says. The cattle market can be a challenge, “with its yo-yo behaviour and forever changing priorities on what type of stock are sought by buyers each week”.
Yandilla and Eltham Vale bulls have gone all over the country. Several years ago, four-year-old Emu Creek O’meara (bought from Heather Britten for its Nehlerien stud lines) undertook a week-long journey across the Nullarbor Plain to WA. The “very compact bull with very good muscling, excellent dark skin and full black points with a smart tidy head and shoulders” went to breeder Arnold Janssen, who later sold him to Chantel Prowse, a fourth-generation farmer who famously supplied British White meat to high-end Perth restaurant Rockpool Bar and Grill. Her British Whites were “100 per cent grass-fed and finished, and their meat is more flavoursome than you usually get”, Chantel said.
Lee can confirm the flavour and quality of British White meat. “I just did a roast blade here a couple of nights ago. I roasted it at 90 degrees for about four hours. Lovely flavour and tenderness, it was delicious.”
Naturally, Lee is proud of her long-term advocacy of the breed, but she feels the loss of her friend and mentor. “I’m pretty well versed on the history of the British Whites coming into Australia. Unfortunately, one of our best buddies, and a founding member of the British White Cattle Society, Ernie Clare (Nehlerien stud) passed away last year, and he often gave me lots of information about how the society started.”
Up until 2000, stock was hard to get hold of, Lee says: “We’d grab whatever we could,” even buying a few animals sight unseen.”
“We had to help build up the breed Society from scratch. When I first joined it was all pre-email, and all of our herd book certificates were handwritten.”
“But we have to keep the breed alive. Support and efforts of our members, meticulous record keeping and continuous advertising to encourage farmers to give British Whites a go are key to helping the Society achieve that” she says.
And as the herd and membership numbers continue to nudge up, it seems to be working.
