Since 1973
A family, one patch of wheatbelt country, and a herd built slowly since 1973.
The stud
Mungatta Murray Grey Stud was established in 1973 at Kalguddering, east of Wongan Hills in the central wheatbelt of Western Australia. The herd is still on the same country, still in the same family.
The stud trades as C & DJ Stickland & Sons and is run today as a family partnership by brothers John and Leon Stickland. Murray Grey cattle sit alongside a commercial sheep enterprise - the two run together across the same paddocks, and each has to make sense on its own terms.
Our registered animals carry the herd prefix CDS with the Murray Grey Beef Cattle Society.
The record
Dates drawn from the stud's own registrations and the Australian Business Register.
The stud that became Mungatta is established at Kalguddering with the purchase of females. The late Clive Stickland is the C in C & DJ Stickland & Sons.
Mungatta is registered with the Murray Grey Beef Cattle Society. The oldest Mungatta animal still on the breed database, Aarongatta, carries the ident CDS 3 and was born in July that year.
The purchase of Michaelong Champagne Charlie brings sound structure, muscling and balance into the herd. His progeny go on to win at the Perth Royal Show and country shows through the 1980s.
J.R Stickland & L.C Stickland is registered as a family partnership in March, and for GST from July.
The emphasis moves from the show ring to overall performance. Mungatta cattle appear in the Group BREEDPLAN Stud Sire Analysis Top 100 for the supermarket index and long fed export lists.
Born in June, Elegant Lad became a trait leader for 200, 400 and 600 day and carcase weight, and went on to sire Overton.
Megawatt, Nicholson and Overton were all bred on the place under the CDS prefix, and took over the bulk of the joining.
Eight Mungatta bulls are catalogued for the March sale at Gingin Recreation Centre, all of them from the 2018 drop.
The family marks half a century of registered breeding, and the business name C & DJ Stickland & Sons is formally registered in October.
Between 85 and 120 calves are registered each year, and only seven to twelve bulls go forward to Gingin. The draft is deliberately narrow.
Why Murray Greys
In times of uncertain climate and economic conditions, the Murray Grey breed is versatile, reliable and profitable. Their traits of fertility, calving ease, docility and doing ability suit a mixed farming operation where cattle have to fit around cropping and sheep.
They are quiet cattle to handle, which matters when the workforce is two brothers and a family. And they hold condition on wheatbelt feed - which is the real test out here.
How we breed
We are constantly improving our herd genetics and characteristics. Nothing stays in the herd on reputation alone.
Selected for femininity and for their ability to rear calves under dry wheatbelt conditions. A cow that cannot raise a calf in a dry year is not doing her job.
Rigorous selection of only the best sires with the top characteristics - growth across all weight intervals, carcase, structure and soundness of feet.
We assess BREEDPLAN figures, fertility and overall performance, so buyers can choose on data rather than on how a bull looks on the day.
The whole farm
The cattle are not a sideline bolted onto a cropping program, and the cropping is not a sideline either. Out here the two carry each other.
The stud herd, registered under the CDS prefix, bred for growth, fertility and the ability to do well on wheatbelt feed. Bulls go to Gingin each March.
Cereals and break crops on country that runs from gravelly red loam to pale yellow sandplain - the wheat, barley, canola, lupins and oaten hay of the central wheatbelt.
A commercial ewe flock joined to Poll Merino rams, shorn in late summer, lambing through winter alongside the cattle.
In a four‑year trial run just up the road at the Wongan Hills research station, wheat yielded better after lupins, serradella, oaten hay and pasture - the legumes fixing nitrogen for the crop that followed, with the benefit still measurable three years on.
On mixed farms crop stubbles make up 15 to 25 per cent of what the livestock eat. Running stock alongside crop is how a wheatbelt business absorbs a bad season in either one - and it is why the cattle have to earn their keep on the same country the crop is grown on.
Two bulls worth remembering
Every stud has a handful of animals whose influence outlasts them. These two shaped more of the herd than any others, and both have since passed on. Their genetics run through the cattle on the place today.
The country
The Shire of Wongan‑Ballidu covers some 3,368 square kilometres of the central wheatbelt, about 180 kilometres north‑east of Perth. It is grain, sheep and cattle country.
The town takes its name from the Noongar Wongan Katta, rendered as the talking, or whispering, hills, for the sound of wind moving through the range north‑west of town. Mount Matilda, at 434 metres, is the high point of the range and of the whole Shire. Lake Ninan lies ten kilometres west; in 1910 its water was carted by camel to keep the town and the steam trains going.
The hills hold more than 1,400 species of flowering plants, 24 of which are found nowhere else in the world, and are the largest single area of remaining native vegetation in the northern wheatbelt.
It is good country that asks a lot of the stock on it. That is precisely what has shaped this herd since 1973.
The place
Come and see them
If you are in the wheatbelt and want to look through the herd, give John or Leon a call and arrange a time.
