GRAZIERS Ross and Jocelyn Oppermann own 400 acres [160 hectares] at Maroon where they run a herd of 100 mixed breed cattle.
The Oppermanns have been in the cattle game for generations and are as tough as they come, but this year the business of buying and selling cattle has been more stressful than others.
“Farming in general is hard to make a dollar out of, my father used to say ‘it’s a pleasant way of spending money’,” Mr Oppermann said.
“That’s why most people doing this have jobs as well ... you have to.
“I work full time in the mines and there are probably a lot of grazing couples in this district that do both as well ... one looks after the cattle and the other is out working.
“If you have a second income stream it helps the reliance on the rural side of it, we wouldn’t make a living out of our farm if we didn’t work.”
He said ‘making a living’ right now was pretty tough as their ability to stay afloat depended on the market and that was something they had no control over.
“The market depends on where you are, if you buy and sell steers to fatten them to bullocks and grow them out, and the market crashes - you lose money,” he said.
“We breed our own but there are people who have paid anything up to $2,500 for steers 12 months ago and would be lucky to get $1,700 for them at the moment.”
The Oppermanns have enough experience to know whether its cattle or produce being farmed, there will always be highs and lows.
The family grow pumpkins and these too are prone to market related price fluctuations.
“We used to grow a fair few pumpkins and you might make nothing out of your pumpkins and two months later the neighbour makes a fortune,” he said.
“As growers and producers can’t control the market ... you can control what you sell, I suppose try and eliminate your losses the best way possible.
“Right now, people selling cattle they bought four months ago are going to be selling them at some form of loss.
“But then again, you’re buying back into a weaker market again, too.”                                                                                                                                                                                                       The buying and selling of cattle on the same market seems like an odd way to do business but the Oppermanns have learned how to juggle and manipulate it in order to get a result that suits them best.
Experience in the game doesn’t always equal a successful outcome and the cattleman is first to admit sometimes he just has to bite the bullet when a situation is out of his control.
“We were selling weaners last year at a top of just over $2,000 and this year we’ll probably be flat out making $1,000, so that’s a 50 percent decrease right there,” he said.
“It is probably still on par as an average but you do get used to making a bit of money occasionally.”
The past few years have brought floods, drought and some of the highest cattle prices ever witnessed.
“Prices hit all time lows during the drought and then between fires and floods there was a shortage of cattle in Australia for a couple of years and this created a market increase,” he recalled.
“That surplus has obviously been somewhat filled and had a couple of years to breed up.
“We are all probably a little bit over supplied in this country, it hasn’t hit record lows but it’s nowhere near the highs we had four months ago.”
His observations echo industry findings.
Looking backward, data shows last year’s high cattle prices didn’t last and this year they’ve dropped to half of what they were back then.
“Our meat prices are very much subject to world trend or world market, the majority of our cattle are export cattle which is all box meat, quarter meat...however they want to divvy it up but it’s very much governed by those prices,” he said.
“Our domestic market and our local market don’t set the prices, they just fall in line with what’s left.
“Quality wise, Australian beef out performs most countries on the world stage because we put out a well constrained market that has a lot of regulation.
“However, at the end of the day we are all conform to what is required to send cattle to a processing plant to have them killed.”