A family business embracing technology
For Lucy Hamblin, innovation is becoming part of everyday life at Strathdale Wagyu.
Working alongside her parents on one of the family’s breeding properties on Queensland’s Darling Downs, Hamblin is part of a business that has grown well beyond the farm gate.
The family breeds purebred Wagyu cattle across multiple breeding properties before raising them through each stage of production, including grain feeding at the business's feedlot, processing and finally selling the beef under the Strathdale Wagyu brand.
It may sound like an ordinary process, but dig a little deeper, and the innovations being implemented by the cattle farmers are state-of-the-art.
In Strathdale’s feedlot, robotic feeding technology was introduced in the last 12 months.
Instead of a traditional feed truck preparing and delivering feed throughout the day, robots collect ingredients including grain, hay and cottonseed, mix each ration and deliver fresh feed to different groups of cattle.
Hamblin said each robot prepares a specific ration before travelling through the sheds to feed individual pens.
“The robots mix the feed together,” she said. “When it’s all prepared, they go down the shed and deliver it to the lot that is allocated that specific mix of feed.”
The system feeds each group of cattle up to five times a day, ensuring fresh feed is available throughout the day.
