Diamond Valley goes from small start-up to award-winning
IN JUST a few short years, Lockyer Valley stud Diamond Valley Brangus has gone from a small start-up to winning shows around the state - including the Ekka.
Matthew Sirett and his family run more than 50 brangus cattle on various properties around the state and have become a formidable force in brangus breeding.
But it wasn’t always this way. As Mr Sirett explained, it was a rocky start when the Gattonbased operation first began in 2012.
“First we just bought a couple of older cows from studs and we didn’t really have a lot of luck with that,” Mr Sirett said.
They went back to the drawing board and came up with a new approach.
“We felt if we’re going to do it, we’re going to concentrate on quality rather than quantity so we lashed out and made a big investment on just one heifer,” he said.
“We did some embryo work with her and flushed some of those embryos out and had them put in and started off a handy herd.”
This decision proved to be a vital one, and Mr Sirett said the cattle they were breeding were some of the best he’d seen.
This passion for quality continued when it came time to begin showing their cattle.
While Mr Sirett and his family had originally hoped to show the animals themselves, they made the decision to have them professionally lead to get the best results possible.
The family contracted Leegra Fitting Service of Murgon to show their brangus and Mr Sirett said they hadn’t looked back.
“They look after the show animals and get them out there to promote our stud and the brangus breed,” he said.
“This allows us to concentrate on looking after our cattle at home.”
The high-quality approach and hard work the family puts in was rewarded last year, when two Diamond Valley beasts won a slew of titles across the state.
A stud bull and heifer competed in 22 shows, with the female taking out the brangus feature show in Emerald.
But the highlight came when the pair won “the double” at last year’s Ekka.
The heifer, now cow, Diamond Valley Miss Foundation 468L went on to again compete in the show scene this year with her bull calf Patriot.
The pair once again took out the brangus feature show in Emerald and went on to win Grand Champion Brangus Female at Beef 2018 in Rockhampton.
Competing at such a high level and winning after just a few short years in the business was a vindication of the stud’s approach, according to Mr Sirett.