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   By ANDREW NORRIS THE LAND BLOOD can’t be drawn from a stone but there’s money in rubies – and many who use Devons, also called “red rubies”, will tell you so. One such farmer is David Smith, who runs farms at North Star and St George, Queensland, with wife, Gwen, and son, Cameron. They introduced Devons in 1994 – which are crossed with Herefords, Shorthorns, Angus and Droughtmasters – when they were restocking their property, “New Kooroon”, St George, after the early 1990s drought forced the sale of their Hereford herd. “I have crossed them with Droughtmaster and they were very attractive cattle,” he said. “You cross them with a Hereford and you get away from eye cancer; with a Shorthorn and they do better, and they don’t hurt a black poll either – I’ve crossed them with Angus and they put more size into Angus.” Most of their cattle are sold to the JBS Swift feedlot at Toowoomba, Qld, and Whyalla feedlot, Texas, Qld, making as much as $2.55 a kilogram to JBS (live), while they’ve also made as much as $1375 (carcase weight) to Cargill. At “Outlaw”, Kempsey, Richard Sowter has also tried a few breeds. It was in the extreme wet of 2001 he got to see which cattle best suited his environment. His menagerie of breeds were spread from the flooding river, with only three breeds (Brahman, Angus and Devon) foraging into the hills for feed. “The Brahmans did well, but missed a year’s calf,” he said. “The old Angus and Devon cows, well I couldn’t find them. “Come springtime I found them with a calf and they were back in calf – I don’t know how, but they’d found a Hereford bull somewhere.” He chose Devons because their weaners were heavier and they were less susceptible to the growing problem of buffalo fly. He has sold second-cross Devon cows from the paddock for as much as $1400 a head – $300 more than the equivalent cows were making in the saleyards at the time, he said. The red rubies have also won fans at “Ulcanbah”, 260 kilometres south-west of Charters Towers, Qld. Robert Hollingsworth runs the 31,800-hectare property with his wife, Linda, his brother, Harold, and Harold’s wife, Lisa, and they sell their cattle to the southern Queensland and NSW markets as milk and two-tooths. While they are also experimenting crossing with Santa Gertrudis, Droughtmaster and Senepol genetics, the Devons are their base due to their ability to survive. Mr Hollingsworth said they couldn’t find a downside to the breed. “They weigh like lead,” he said. “You can go to the sales and ask the agent what he reckons they’re going to weigh and he’ll often be 30 to 40 kilograms under.” He said the breed’s cow size was efficient and they always reared a calf. Some of the best calves he had seen were Brahman/Devon. “They’re docile, muscly and they’re just beautiful looking things,” he said. He’s never pulled a Devon calf and when he had brought bulls home, whether they were pasture prepared or show fed, he said they kept going as if nothing changed. MASTER butcher, Ken Oakley, Tamworth, has made a life from meat, and along the way seen a few breeds with standout meat quality, including Devon. He got into the meat business in 1976 when he left his family’s farm and has since managed two butcher shops and the meat cutting demonstrations at Sydney Royal Show, been an Intercollegiate Meat Judging Competition coach and inaugural committee member, and is now a meat industry workplace assessor for TAFE. “Not all butchers get to understand the live side – with Devons, one of their greatest characteristics is their do-ability,” Mr Oakley said. “The trouble was (farmers) put them up on country where other cattle wouldn’t survive too well.” Because they’d been up in this country they never looked the “ritz” in the saleyards, he said. However, for meat quality, he said Devon was better than or equal to most British breeds, with its extremely fine texture. “Once you get fine texture, this will equal tenderness,” he said. This made them great for crossbreeding, plus they were easy to finish on pasture or grain. In the early 1990s, when he had his own herd, he put 70 Devon-cross calves on feed. He pulled the heifers out at 65 days and the last of the steers at 90 days and their average daily gain was 2.6 kilograms. “We sold those to Woy Woy abattoirs and the only feedback I got was ‘how many more of those do you have?’,” he said. The breed’s Gloucester branch concurrently ran a feeding trial and asked him to assess the carcases. “As far as the domestic market, you couldn’t have got any better – they were absolutely first-class and meat quality was second to none,” he said. With the Devon’s efficiency also came the ability to finish easily, which was important when crossing with European breeds, he said, as it prevented carcase moisture loss. “Lean carcases can lose as much as seven to nine per cent of carcase weight in seven days due to moisture loss,” Mr Oakley said. “There’s a trend with younger (butcher) managers today to look at the fat tub at the end of the day and see it as waste, and while yield is important, so is palatability. “They don’t see it as quality – I see it as a guarantee the meat I’m selling this week is good enough to get customers back next week.” The breed was also finer boned – the same trait that made it good in the hills – which provided an extra one to two per cent saleable meat yield when boned out, he said. It was a similar story from Malcolm Wood, Bulahdelah, who is re-establishing his Limousin/Devon herd after a business restructure. His aim is for half his 150-head herd to be Devon to join to Limousins for butcher, Peter Silcock, Little Peter’s Quality Meats, Raymond Terrace. These would be finished on pasture and Mr Silcock was keen to have Limousin/Devon back on his shelves. “With the combination of the two, you get the right fat coverage and quality tasting meat,” Mr Wood said. Mr Silcock said these were what the customer wanted, and in his experience the cross yielded better than the beef from other British breed crosses. “When I slice it and pack it on a tray it sells itself – it always looks good,” he said.
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