An increasing trend is for pastoral properties to send lighter animals to the southern region to be ‘backgrounded’, or grown out, to heavier weights to enable access to the live export trade or entry into feedlots for future abattoir supply. However, the success of this approach revolves around reducing the amount of weight that is lost in the transition phase during transport from station and settling into the backgrounding property. The aim of this project was to quantify weight gain/loss in backgrounding systems for the first two months following induction in the West Midlands region.
Data was collected on cattle that were transported to the backgrounding region in 2018 and 2019 from multiple properties within the Pilbara and Northern Rangelands regions of WA, with the backgrounding properties located near Badgingarra in the West Midlands region. The cattle in this study were transitioned in the May to October period of each year and individual animal performance data was collected to monitor weight gain from induction at the backgrounding property for a period of approximately two months.
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