ONCE upon a time, the annual ‘Channel Country bullock turnoff’ was an absolute curve-bender in the northern and eastern Australian slaughter cattle market environment.
Very large, even lines of heavyweight grassfed bullocks off the Diamantina, Georgina and Cooper systems would head east or south each year during spring, having gorged themselves on the region’s ‘grass feedlot’ resource of native sorghum and other nutritious grasses.
And it couldn’t happen at a better time, given that August-September is typically the…