Young farmer swaps bucking bulls for paddock to plate Speckle Parks

A Merton young farmer has swapped bucking bulls for his new love, Speckle Park cattle.

Scott Purcell and his partner Tia Smith, Bonkonia Speckle Park, Merton, ran 80 of the colourful beasts on 40 hectares of their own land and a further 120ha of leased country.

While Mr Purcell's family had always been into rodeo and bucking bulls, both he and Ms Smith were first generation farmers and were now building a thriving business for their sons Beau (4) and Tucker (1).

The couple first dived into the studstock world in 2019 and had built up a herd of 40 stud cows, supplying bulls across the country.

Exactly a year ago, they also set up a paddock to plate beef business with growing demand for their Speckle Park product in the region and into Melbourne.

Mr Purcell said he had a love of genetics from a young age.

"My family had rodeo bulls on leased country," he said.

"We always played around with genetics doing that as well.

"I've just had a passion for genetics and I knew I wanted to keep on with stud cattle."

While he thought about getting into Herefords, it was a chance encounter with Speckle Park beef at a friend's house that got Mr Purcell thinking.

"A friend of ours, we were at their barbecue and they had a home-killed Speckle Park steer that we ate that night," he explained.

"When we tasted it it was something different and I started looking into the breed and researched and said 'I reckon we'll have a crack at the Speckles'."

He said while being around bucking bulls had given him a soft spot for coloured cattle, when it came to serious beef breeding, it was more about the carcass.

"The colour is a good attraction but it's more about what's under the skin," Mr Purcell said.

"We try to promote what's under the skin rather than what's on top of it."

Bonkonia started out with one recipient heifer and in 2022, the couple travelled to Canada and brought home some of their top Speckle Park genetics.

"That was our first dive into it and from there, we bought a couple of stud heifers and flushed a few cows and bought a few embryos as well," Mr Purcell said.

Stud cows calved in autumn and the commercial herd dropped in late spring.

He said there were rarely any issues and the breed made for exceptional mothers.

"It's gone really well and we haven't pulled a single calf," he said.

"All our maiden heifers calved down at two years old and they've all taken it in their stride."

The Speckle Park also "100 per cent" went head to head with the Angus and could deliver just as well for farmers, according to Mr Purcell.

"That hybrid vigour with that cross is second to none as well, it's unbeatable," he said.

"Head to head, if you had a purebred next to a purebred, the Speckles are definitely probably faster to fatten.

"They don't quite have the growth the Angus will get but then they'll make up for it in the yield percentages."

These carcass traits had led Mr Purcell and Ms Smith to add a paddock to plate beef string to their bow and Bonkonia now supplied Speckle Park beef direct to their customers.

They killed 1-2 cattle a week, usually at 550-600 kilograms live-weight, 250-300kg dead-weight, with 8-10 millimetres of fat cover.

The cattle were slaughtered at Gathercoles Wangaratta and packed at Ms Smith's parent's butchers, Balmattum Butchery, Euroa.

"It was exactly 12 months ago last week when we had our first kill," Mr Purcell said.

"We haven't got a single bit of bad feedback from the get go right up until now.

"We can take a bit of pride in how we finish them and get them right and make sure we have a consistent fat cover."

Bonkonia sold the beef into a local Mansfield market, restaurants, and as far afield as Melbourne.

Mr Purcell said the Speckle Park breed was ideally suited for such an enterprise and customers were very happy with the product.

"We have people come out here all the time, they walk around the herd, they like to see the cattle and see they're happy that there's no feedlots or confinements," he said.

The farm steered clear from antibiotics and synthetic fertilisers and this too was a selling point for the beef.

While Mr Purcell felt there may not have been a stronger margin from selling direct to customers, prices were more predictable.

"The butcher still gets his cut and the abattoir still gets their cut," he said.

"It's just the supermarkets that are sort of out of the equation.

"The reason we did it was with leasing country, we couldn't really rely on unpredictable prices for your steers.

"It's a lot more work and it doesn't end up being a whole lot more than what you might get at the market but at least we know it's locked in and that's what we're getting this year."

Being a new and young farmer was also all about trying something different.

"You've got to have a bit of drive and you've got to think outside the box," Mr Purcell said.

"You can't be farming the same as everyone else.

"You've got to not be afraid to listen to what the old guys have to say but also to think outside the box and think how maybe you could do it a bit differently or better.

"You learn different things being a younger generation and it's about taking that stuff into your agriculture."

Mr Purcell said he couldn't farm without Ms Smith as she was the "backbone" of the operation.

Son Beau was also keen on getting stuck in, something Mr Purcell said was great to see.

"You can't go into the yards without him, you can't get in the tractor without him, he loves it to death," he said.

"That's what it's all about."