A 22-year-old cattle farmer who expanded his family’s beef operation to King Island to guard against drought says the island is an “almost perfect spot to produce beef cattle”.
Ben Duddy runs the King Island arm of Duddy Pastoral, a family business with an Angus stud near Tamworth in northern New South Wales and a commercial herd on the Bass Strait island.
He said the family came to King Island in 2024 to “drought-proof” their operation after several droughts at Tamworth.
Duddy said the island’s temperate climate ranged from five to 25 degrees, reaching maybe 30 at the peak of summer, with no frost in winter.
“The cattle are just on a rising plane of nutrition 12 months of the year on rye grass and white clover,” he told Pulse.
That first year was King Island’s driest in 144 years, but Duddy said the business “only spent $40,000 feeding a couple of thousand head of cattle”, which he said was low compared with what they had spent in New South Wales.
He said the advantage of King Island was that they had confidence the weather would be reliable “year in, year out”, something the family could not count on as much in New South Wales.
“King Island can get very wet in winter, but that’s never bothered me because there’s more money in mud than dust, in my opinion.”
In 2013, the family travelled to the United States and gained access to genetics from a stud Duddy described as one of the best in the world.
He said they later secured semen rights to a bull that sold for a world record $1.51 million.
The bulls bred from the American genetics at Tamworth are tested in the King Island herd, allowing them to collate a large dataset on the genetics.
Duddy said the cattle were grown out to 600-650kg and kill data from processing at Greenhams in Smithton showed whether the breeding was heading in the right direction.
He said their wearers had averaged 55kg heavier than in previous years.
The family’s work on the island, including new cattle yards that can process up to 200 head of cattle an hour, has caught the attention of the state government.
Duddy first met the premier when he visited King Island during the state election campaign in July last year and saw him again during the premier’s trip to the island on Monday.
Duddy said governments, especially the federal government, needed to be aware of the red tape and taxes facing farmers.
He said farmers were “paying a fortune” for prime agricultural land but could not always clear it or improve pasture and the business had found it hard to get approval to clear bush for a dam.
He said any extra land taxes would make it “a lot harder to make the numbers work for family farming operations”.
Despite those concerns, Duddy said the state government had been supportive of the operation.
“I think it’s better than any other government I’ve been involved with in terms of supporting us,” he said.
Premier Jeremy Rockliff said Duddy had invested almost $1 million in his cattle yards, showing King Island “is an island that is well and truly worth investing in”.
“King Island is renowned for the best beef in the world and it is,” Rockliff said.
Duddy urged shoppers to look for local beef brands and to support local butchers.
“What we need to do in this country is try and support family farming operations and local businesses,” he said.
He said his goal was to double the size of the King Island operation.
