To find the Viewbank herd, just follow the Finniss River on South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula, and it will be somewhere close to where the waterway spills into the lakes along the Coorong.
This is where Annie and Jon Lovejoy run as many as 120 self-replacing breeders on their 550 acres of incredibly fertile river flats.
Flats so reliable that Jon says they have saved their enterprise from more than one bad season—helped by access to a water table barely 300mm below the surface.
“We’re not a big operation, and while we would have loved to grow, the land around here is tightly held, and there haven’t been a lot of opportunities to buy any adjoining properties,” Jon explains.
“We bought in here 22 years ago, and at the time, the herd then was a bit like Heinz 57 varieties. Our nearby friends at Wellington Lodge, Keith and Janet McFarlane, who had joined Team Te Mania as foundation members in 1995, reassured us not to worry—they’d help us get sorted,” he recalls.
In the years that followed, they joined the McFarlane’s in Team Te Mania.
“The whole family has been incredible mentors and wonderful friends, and joining the Team has been a very successful move for us.”
“We started doing AI seven years ago, specifically to improve herd quality, and at the same time, we’ve managed to narrow our calving period each autumn,” he adds.
“We mostly try to tap into the Ranger’s Valley relationship as we are only turning off around 45-50 steers a year. We are usually able to get in on a bigger load headed that way, which is ideal for us, and we really value the feedback. It’s a fabulous relationship.”
“And we love the annual Team Te Mania conference. It introduced us to things such as low-stress stock handling. It’s a very engaging and stimulating opportunity, and we have a wonderful relationship with all the other members.”
Jon says they stagger their Team bull intake so they have constant infusions of the newest genetics and, for years, have worked in parallel with the Wellington Lodge management program.
Key details:
Member of Team Te Mania since 2008
Calving period – April
