For a grazing family who 'normally won't take the risk of going to a sale', taking a punt has paid off.
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Alister and Jo McClymont, AJM Pastoral, Burleigh Station, Richmond, have offered nearly 3000 heifers through the Roma Saleyards in the past four weeks, after having them agisted on carbon country at Cunnamulla.
Where they would normally offload in-calf heifers through AuctionsPlus, Mr McClymont said the need for feed had driven them to find an alternate avenue.
"Due to the season, we ended up with quite a few empty heifers last year so we took a punt. We thought the market would be a lot better this year so we took them down to Cunnamulla where there was plenty of room on these carbon places," he said.
"They had a good season there last year with good rain early last year, so there was a lot of dry feed in amongst the mulga and then of course the Paroo ran early in the year and ran again in September, so we could unload a lot of cattle in one spot, like 1000 or 1500 head, and know they had plenty of water."
Sending 7000 head south at the end of last year, with a few more still to go, the remaining heifers will be unloaded in spring.
"It's unfortunate that a lot of those heifers have got an eight on them, they really should have been sold PTIC last year but it was due to the season that we couldn't - it wasn't good enough to get them in calf," Mr McClymont said.
"We've held our numbers through the drought and this was the opportunity we were looking for because we unload a lot of heifers every year.
"The heifers we've got to come now are all No.9s, and a lot of these heifers are not culled for quality; due to the high fertility in our Composite cattle, we have a big surplus of heifers every year."
Facilitated by the Corporate Carbon Advisory, which carries out projects that target emissions reductions and carbon sequestration, Mr McClymont said the arrangement worked well.
"We've had these cattle on something like 400,000 acres (162,000 hectares), so that was good," he said.
"My youngest son Campbell, he took on the project and spent about a week down there every month, checking everything out and checking on the cattle.
"He's done the muster in the last month and sent them in in four different mobs. We didn't have the holding paddocks and that to work them, so he just brought them in and drafted them straight onto trucks and then when they got to Roma, they preg tested them and put them into lines.
"We thought the market would be there and it looks like we've assessed that correctly."
The heifers topped at $2180 a head on Tuesday, with a line of 542 pregnancy-tested-in-calf heifers averaging $1800.
Selling agent Boyd Curran, Nutrien Western, said selling on a dollars per head basis, as opposed to the usual cents per kilogram at Roma, had been a pretty good logistical exercise.
"In the past four weeks, we've had 2700 heifers come in from AJM Pastoral. For the PTIC heifers, the average has increased by nearly $250/head over that time," he said.
"We're very pleased with the feedback we've got on the heifers, particularly around their temperament, type, their quality, and I think it's a credit to AJM who is a large-scale cattle producer from the north with the way they've presented the cattle.
"It's been a good arrangement between the cattle industry and the carbon industry in utilising the feed that was there."
