Quality grainfed beef keeps them coming back for more

No strangers to the winner's circle at the Royal Adelaide Show, the family is also playing its part in the South Australia Murray Grey Breed Promotion Group's branded beef project.

Jackie Baker said they had been producing 500-550 kilogram target weight Murray Greys to go into the project for the past year.

"We also aim to produce 380-470kg cattle for the local butcher trade, and anything above Woolies weight will generally head to Teys (over 600kg)," Mrs Baker said.

"Using our home bred greys, and buying suitable typed Murray Grey cattle at local markets, as well as from local breeders, we are slowly building awareness of our Murray Grey product and finding those that eat our grainfed beef are quite often wanting to know how they are supposed to eat anything else now," she said.

"Together with Ashvell Murray Greys and Rhys O'Donohue from Moonta Gourmet Meats, we are slowly piecing some markets together for our locally bred and grown grainfed Murray Grey beef.

"The lesser cuts have been harder to find markets for and Rhys has recently worked together with Wintulichs to make a MG Kransky, which tastes great."

Mrs Baker said the family, including Leigh's son, Todd and wife, Pauline, operate as a trust, running 160 commercial breeders, predominantly Murray Grey, on their 3500 hectare property at Wild Horse Plains, as well as running another 100 head on their 81ha grazing block in the Adelaide Hills.

"We also run about 30 stud Murray Grey females, as well as 400 Merino ewes that we mate to White Suffolk for crossbred fat lambs," she said.

Cropping about 3000ha of barley, wheat, and lentils, the Bakers make their own oaten hay, with the straw also bailed to bed cattle down in their seasonal feedlot.

They operate the feedlot from February through to August, however also put their Murray Greys through the feedlot out of season, as required, with a turnover of 350-500 head on average each year.

"Buying young cattle at local markets and occasionally privately, we will background them each year until they are suitable for the feedlot," Mrs Baker said.

"We are lucky as we have a range of markets we can put a lot of different weight ranges through."

Calving at the end of April, the Bakers traditionally keep about 30 replacement heifers annually, with the remainder put through the feedlot.

"Heifers are calved at two-years old, and feedlot cattle sold to either the local butcher trade, Teys, Woolies or Moonta Gourmet Meats," she said.

"We base our breeding on well muscled early maturing Murray Greys and we want last year's calves in the feedlot this year, and on the truck.

"We pick through our pens taking cattle as they are done, rather than sending just a pen as they do in bigger feedlots."

Mrs Baker said steers were fed on grain for 90 days while heifers were fed for roughly 75 days.

"We are commercially based and if a cow doesn't get in calf, have a calf, rear a good calf, or have anything not structurally holding up, they will be on the truck," she said.

Mrs Baker said visitors were always welcome by appointment.

"We have commercial bulls available for sale and are happy to show people what we do, and what we breed," she said.