By Burt Rutherford | Contributing Editor ONLY THE WORDS ARE DIFFERENT CATTLE PRODUCERS ARE PRETTY MUCH THE SAME EVERYWHERE
“I t’s the same. We just use different words.” Of the many things Mia Doering saw and learned during her time observing the cattle business in Texas and comparing it with Australia, it was that the similarities far outweigh the differences. She got the opportunity to study abroad when she received the R.J. Kleberg Scholarship, through the Australian Santa Gertru- dis Breeders Association.“I grew up on our family ranch,” she says, where they raise seedstock Santa Gertrudis and a commer- cial cow-calf herd. Presently, she works for Consolidated Pastoral Company in Australia as a safety and welfare business partner,“working alongside our teams to improve our safety performance, our communication skills, our training and all the people compo- nents of the ranching side of things.” That’s quite a task, given that the company’s ranches span 3.2 million hectares (nearly 8 million acres) on nine ranches spread across Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Aus- tralia. Interestingly, her dad received the same scholarship more than 30 years ago. It was through the connections he made back then that gave Doering a truly insightful experience. Those connections led her to visit James Clement with the King Ranch in Texas, where the Santa Gertrudis breed originated and where she lived and worked alongside the cowboys and other employees for nine weeks. “I was really lucky that I got to spend a bit of time at King Ranch, working across all facets, including Santa Gertrudis cattle, Quarter Horses and learn about their lotting operations,” she says. Consolidated Pastoral’s ranches are all in regions that are hot, remote, with sparse forage. That’s not unlike the Wild Horse Prairie where the King Ranch is located, other than the terrain. The Australian ranches are in rough, rugged, rocky and sometimes steep landscapes with little infrastructure, where being a cow can be challenging.
As such, they have an early weaning program, she says.“It’s very similar to what you guys call preconditioning. We develop a ration to kickstart the rumen.” However, it’s designed primarily to give the cows ample time to recover and breed back.“We wean them early to increase fertility rates and the chance of rebreed in the seasonal conditions.” Doering spent many hours with Clement, learning not just the daily happenings on the King Ranch, but the longer term management objectives as well.“He showed me their way of life in Texas and the ranching culture, the stewardship of the land and all the values of the King Ranch with family, the cattle, the horses, the history and the people. Very much the culture we value in Australia.” Some of those conversations were about ways to revitalize the scholarship into a two-way exchange, where a young person in Australia comes to America and a young person from America goes to Australia. “I was also very blessed that Dr. Rick Machen invited me to the King Ranch Institute of Ranch Management,” on the campus of Texas A&M-Kingsville.“The lectureship that was on while I was there was on cow-calf operations. It was really insightful and had a lot of principles I could take back and apply on our own operation.” Following her nine weeks on the King Ranch, Doering joined Chris McClure and his wife, Missy, on a tour across Texas, visiting more ranches and feedyards.“There were some really awesome ranches where you could see the consistency in their breeding and creating a really superb animal, both phenotype and genotype,” she says. “I think in Australia, we value our Santa Gertrudis so much for their phenotype,” she added. While some breeders are chasing genetic indication numbers, which are called EBVs in Australia, “You can’t evaluate an animal just on numbers unless you’ve got the phenotype to support that. We are a lot tougher on pheno- type because our climate and terrain is so extreme.”
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June | July 2025
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