Sorting recently mustered cattle in the round yard at Larry’s Lake Yards on Victoria River Downs Cattle Station. The station covers 3,900 sq km with almost 33,000 cattle scattered across a lease established in 1883.
Cattle ranching is very seasonal in the Northern Territory, with most of the non-sealed roads unusable during the wet season from December through March, when the cattle are left in near-wild conditions to graze on the abundant fresh grass, and the stations have only a skeleton crew of caretakers. The mustering is done so that they can go through the herd to separate the one-year-old “weaners” from their mothers, all the weaners will be branded and given ear tags, and the males will be castrated. They will do a pregnancy test on all of the cows, and pull out the old unproductive females and all the 2-year-old calves for the live export market.
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