Who you're dealing with
Eighty-five acres under the mountain.
This market runs on trust and it has been burned. So: real names, a real address, and a straight account of where we are.
Our property sits at about 875 metres on the slopes of Mount Canobolas, west of Orange in the Central West of New South Wales. Cold winters, reliable rain, summers moderated by altitude. It has been a cattle property for a long time — most recently running Angus.
We're changing it over to Highlands. That isn't a whim about fluffy cows: it's a deliberate move from commodity beef to a small, high-value fold where the animals are known individually, handled daily and sold to people who'll keep them for twenty years rather than eighteen months.
It also means the herd is small on purpose. Eighty-five acres would carry a great many more cattle than we intend to run. We'd rather have twenty animals we can each name than sixty we can't.
James runs it, answers the emails, and does the halter training. If you buy an animal here, he's who you'll deal with — on the property, by name, before and after the sale.
The country, looking toward the mountain.
What we've committed to
Standards we'll be held to.
Not aspirations. These are the things we'd want a buyer to check us against.
- Own-bred only
- Every animal we sell is born here out of our own registered dams. We don't buy weaners in to grow out and re-sell, which means we can tell you the whole of an animal's life without guessing.
- Registered, verified
- Australian Highland Cattle Society membership and fold prefix — application in progress. Registered animals are DNA parentage-verified, with transfer completed by us before collection.
- Handled, not just quiet
- Halter-broken, tie-trained, foot-handled, float-loaded. "Quiet in the paddock" is not training, and the difference shows up on the day you need to load her.
- Biosecurity taken seriously
- PIC and NLIS registered. Every incoming animal quarantined three to four weeks, BVDV-tested and JD-status checked before it joins the fold. J-BAS plan drafted with our vet.
- Published prices
- The price guide is on this site, not behind an enquiry form. If a price changes, it changes there first.
- Terms in writing, first
- Solicitor-drafted terms provided before any deposit is taken. Deposits capped under 10%, held separately, and refundable on the conditions we've published.
Where we actually are
We're new. Our registered dams are being purchased across this season, mentored by an established Society member because buying breeding stock blind is how new folds go wrong. Calves follow, then weaning, then halter training — and the first heifers come to market roughly fifteen to twenty months after the dams arrive.
So there is nothing to sell today, and we've said so on every page rather than leaving you to work it out. What there is: a waitlist that costs nothing, quarterly open days once there are animals worth walking out to see, and a set of guides written to help you decide against us if that's the right answer.
The reason to talk to us now rather than in two years is simply that the good animals in this breed are spoken for from the paddock. They don't reach a classifieds site. The list is where the queue forms.