Andrew Bouffler shared with us the knowledge he gained while on his own study abroad trip years ago. He talked about the difference between performance and fitness and how breeding strictly for performance can kill fitness which kills profitability, thereby defeating the purpose of breeding for performance. I found it all quite interesting. His daughter Ruby was running around with a baby lamb, Tom, trailing closely, but I agree with Graeme that a more appropriate name would have been Little Bo Peep.
We reboarded the bus and drove through some desolate country to our next stop: an emu farm in a town called The Rock in reference to a large mountain in the distance. The emus were quite entertaining. We learned that they have a mating season and the females are very territorial, so it was quite comical to watch them shoo each other away. Some were daring enough to fight for their spot, which is like nothing I've ever seen a bird do before.
We learned that when an emu is harvested, the best product is the 10 kilograms of oil which sells for $50/kilogram, making their herd of 200 worth $100,000 in oil alone, not including the other products: meat, leather, feathers, and eggs. Our hosts, Ian and Marilyn Marston, cooked lunch for us, which sadly was not emu, but grass-fed beef. Our final stop of the day was Spry's Shorthorn Stud. Gerald Spry took us around the small pens near the barn to show us some young bulls and a few cows. I was surprised to learn that one of the bulls we saw was valued at $46,000!
Then we got to get in out of the cold in the shed where he described his breeding program and another guy described the feedlot he manages that finishes Wagyu and Wagyu-cross cattle. We capped off this long day with a supper of grain-fed beef steaks that tasted like home.
