DROUGHT drove the Varleys to change their business, writes KIM WOODS

As a young teenager, the words "sheep and cattle" didn't enter Nichole Varley's vocabulary.

She was living a Melbourne lifestyle as a student at Tintern Girls Grammar.

But her love of animals led her to the school's junior judging program while she was in Year 10.

Nichole quickly discovered an affinity with livestock, taking out the Royal Melbourne Show's state junior judging competition two years later.

The prize was a Simmental heifer named Bettina.

Nichole was hooked and went on to establish the Killara Rise Simmental stud. Today she runs the stud of 170 breeding females with her husband, Andrew, at Finley in southern NSW.

A mother of four, Nichole also works part-time as a livestock markets reporter and helps run the couple's 999-head cattle feedlot, prime lamb and cropping enterprises.

Their 729ha farm is set in a 436mm rainfall zone and the soils range from clay to clay loam.

Breeding both polled and horned cattle, the Varleys operate in a strict commercial environment.

They focus on market-driven traits combined with structural soundness, fertility and temperament.

A national champion Simmental sire, Buckingham Usher, has been used over the females to add length and muscle and is ranked highly for eye muscle area.

Nichole is no slouch when it comes to assessing cattle on the hoof and hook.

In the early 1990s she worked as an assistant livestock co-ordinator at Castricum Bros, co-ordinating kills and feeder cattle.

At age 25, Nichole took over as the prime and store market reporter with the National Livestock Reporting Service at Wagga Wagga and Wodonga.

Being young and female did have its challenges in a male-dominated industry.

"I knew the job and was determined to do it properly, earning mutual respect among the older buyers," Nichole said.

"Over the years it has been enjoyable. I've had many laughs with some larger-than-life characters."

On sale days, Nichole used to bundle her young children and their nanny into the car.

"The kids and their nanny would have a picnic on the grass while I was at Wednesday's cow sales," she said.

These days Nichole specialises in Shepparton and Finley cattle sales but has also reported on sheep.

"It's always a rugby match at the sheep sales as I'm up to my elbows diving into the pack," she said.

"Sheep are harder (to report) as you've got to feel (fat score) them."

If that isn't enough, Nichole is undertaking a year-long Fairley Leadership program.

The program develops leadership skills in a group of 24 people drawn from a range of industries in the Goulburn and Murray valleys.

Nichole and Andrew, an agronomist, were forced to re-jig their business during the drought.

"In the 1990s everything we touched turned to gold when it came to rice and cropping," Andrew said.

"When the seasons cut out we could see problems ahead for the irrigation industry.

"We wanted an enterprise not tied with rainfall or irrigation."

The couple converted 20ha into a commercial cattle feedlot in 2004.

It was underpinned by a five-year contract to feed Holstein-Wagyu steers and heifers for the Japanese market.

Sheep numbers were halved and the stud stock sent away on agistment.

"Our feedlot model was based around achieving the highest-quality product rather than weight gain," Andrew said.

"We were able to value add our own grain and straw in the feedlot.

"The drought taught us to use by-products, balancing megajoules of energy and cost-effective rations."

The rations were based on barley, cereal straw, wheat, canola hay and lucerne hay for a 150-200 day program.

About 526ha of canola, wheat and barley grown each year supplies the feedlot.

"We have been feeding our own Simmental steers and cull heifers, but are interested in contract feeding for other people," Andrew said.

This year, steers sold direct to Cargill at 290-380kg carcass weight after 140 days on feed.

The feedlot is now almost empty after a wet winter, a strong store cattle market and rising barley prices.

"We are signing off on a model to begin feeding lambs for contracts," Andrew said.

The couple are also planning to sell selected registered Simmental cows, calves and heifers on AuctionsPlus in late spring.

"We normally sell bulls privately each year into the Goulburn Valley region," Nichole said.

"But with three years of zero water allocations, whole dairy herds have disappeared."

The Varleys kept their core stud females during the drought, weaning calves as young as six months.

Selected bulls and heifers were handpicked for live export to Russia and Indonesia for breeding programs.

"We have reached critical mass so can be selective on our females to tighten calving patterns," Nichole said.

"The females are highly fertile with many back in calf 21 days after calving."

The herd has a phenomenal fertility history, with 15-20 per cent of calves born as twins, and two sets of triplets born during the past year.

"The fertility is combined with milk and muscle," Nichole said.

"They are good-framed cattle but not extreme."
Nichole said market demand for solid red and black Simmentals has seen the introduction of new genetics.

On the cropping side, Andrew is planning to sow 81ha of rice this spring, for the first time in four years.

"In the 1990s it was about maximising production, but in the drought we were not getting a unit rise in production for a unit increase of input," he said.

"There was a shift from maximising yield and profit to minimising losses.

"Dryland farming only started in this region 10 years ago so we are catching up."