Fourteen-year-old running the newest Charolais stud on the scene

At the same time as her Year 9 classmates are coming to terms with the new school year, Summer Kelly, 14, will be welcoming visitors to her Golden Park Charolais stud for her first Stock & Land Beef Week participation.

Less than 15 months after starting the stud, Ms Kelly has experienced the highs of winning ribbons at shows, is eagerly anticipating Stock & Land Beef Week and has a firm eye on the future of the operation at Nalangil, about 15 minutes from Colac.

"I'd never lived on a farm myself, but my grandfather always ran commercial Angus," she said.

"We were at the saleyards and bought two heifers and I just fell in love with them."

She and her father, Christian, moved to the 56-hectare property in September 2023, and she started her stud in November that year.

"We've built everything on the property," she said.

"It had a very old-fashioned house, a couple of old-fashioned wooden sheds and falling down yards.

"We just kind of cleared everything, made the ground flat and refenced the property, built a house and shed."

At that point, the property had a mix of cattle before the decision to go with Charolais cattle.

"At the moment we are running about 35 cows and 35 heifers," she said.

"Last year, we did buy a bull, which we ran over our cattle.

"This year's calves are by him.

"We've also been focusing on artificial insemination and we've got a few embryo programs that are due in March, which is a bit exciting.

"I really want to grow some really great cattle, have some really good bloodlines and great genetics.

"The genetics side of it, it's cool seeing how different each animal is."

To this end, Golden Park has sourced good genetics for its herd.

"A lot of ours are Palgrove based; we've also had a bit of help from Waterford, Black Duck and Charnelle [Charolais studs]," she said.

It was at Sapphire Halliday's Waterford stud that Ms Kelly had her first look at all that Stock & Land Beef Week entailed.

"I heard about Stock & Land Beef Week last year in January," she said.

"I went out to Waterford Charolais and had a look; [they] had a cool set-up.

"Their cattle were great, it was just really cool."

A benefit of starting up from scratch is putting a stamp on the set-up.

"We built new wooden yards with smaller pens so we can actually put cattle on display," she said.

Once Stock & Land Beef Week is over, business at the stud will return to planning out the year.

"The next few years we are going to try to calve in September," she said.

"Just because that's when we have a fair bit of grass around.

"We can give them calves that extra boost before summer hits."

The ambition is to build up a show-quality herd.

"I want to breed some top-quality calves and maybe even one day win a royal show," she said.

"We're trying to run a smaller herd of top-quality cattle, not a bunch of low quality.

"We had a great year last year.

"We got a fair few reserve champions overall and won three champion heifers, a champion bull and a reserve champion bull.

"We did well at the Royal Geelong Show and at local shows, which was Colac, Warrnambool and then we had Noorat."

Ms Kelly said the breeding ambitions in the short term were shaped by concerns about feet and teats.

"We're big on feet, we don't like cracks in the feet of our cattle," she said.

"We want them to last quite a while.

"At the moment we're focusing a bit on udders.

"We're trying to get rid of extra teats on some of the cows.

"Our big cows, they just have a couple of extra teats, which we're putting a bull in which has a good past; his parents, his mum, his grandma had good teats.

"We'll put him over those cows that have the extra teats and hope that the calf picks up on the bull's side."

With tertiary studies still some years away, Ms Kelly is looking to broaden her horizons with some industry-related travel.

"The plan is that I will go to Canada, not next year, the year after," she said.

"We'll look at what it's like, how they do their cattle.

"I've seen some really great cattle from Canada.

"I'd definitely like to have a look at all the big farms over there.

"Dad and I might do some experimenting with a bit of Canadian genetics after I come back.

"Might just put a bit of semen in and see how the calves come out."