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Drovers take advantage of good grazing ahead of summer
ABC NEWS (Australia)
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10/3/2023
With a hot and dry summer on the way, cattle producers are making the most of good pasture across Queensland's stock routes. A team of drovers is walking 2000 head of cattle on a journey that'll last for months.
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00:00
It looks like a scene from an old western movie, but this is what modern day droving
00:07
looks like.
00:08
Bill Little and his Little team will spend five months walking this herd more than 1200
00:13
kilometres.
00:14
Married to the mob.
00:15
No, it's full on.
00:18
We do the same thing every day.
00:19
We get up early, we look after the cows all day, we try and get to bed early, just do
00:23
it all again next day.
00:24
They use the dawn light to pack up camp, saddle up and get back on the road.
00:28
Oh I love it, like where else would you want to be honestly, you know?
00:32
Sun, mornings like this, it's just insane, yeah.
00:36
It takes a team of 23 dogs, at least a dozen horses and four people to keep the cattle
00:41
moving for months.
00:43
These days, droving is a rare sight, with most graziers moving their stock by truck.
00:48
Travelling less than 20 kilometres each day, the journey from Julia Creek to Tambo is a
00:54
slow one.
00:55
As the season turns and country dries up, graziers are taking advantage of the good
00:59
feed along stock routes.
01:01
Livestock agents say now is the time to buy, not to sell.
01:06
At the moment I feel very fortunate that we've got beautiful feed and we're able to take
01:10
advantage of the lower cattle prices.
01:14
Days bleed into weeks after months on the road.
01:17
The team don't know when they'll be home next.
01:20
That's a good question in our game, we don't even know what day it is half the time.
01:23
[BLANK_AUDIO]
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