As coach of cricket and rugby league sides Larry led from the front and let his on field achievements speak for themselves. There are numerous Premiership Medallions to prove his better than average abilities both as a player and as a leader.
Larry’s personal motto during his sporting career “DON’T DIE WONDERING” has left him relaxed and with very few regrets. I also think that this motto has continued to be applied to the rest of Larry’s life as well.
CATTLEMAN
A National and International judge and widely recognised as one of Australia’s leading beef cattle judges. The demand for Larry’s services has seen him judge at almost every Royal Show in Australia and twice at the New Zealand Royal and numerous feature shows and at the Beef Expo in Rockhampton , Australia’s largest beef cattle show.
A fifth generation cattleman Larry grew up with a strong commercial background in the beef cattle industry. This is evident when you watch him judge and comment on the cattle. He has never been carried along by trends and has always kept a solid commercial attitude to breeding and judging. Something we don’t see enough of in the show ring. Larry has bred , prepared and exhibited Champion Stud animals at Sydney , Canberra and Melbourne Royals across 5 breeds and sold cattle into all States of Australia and exported live cattle , embryos and semen . You would need a small truck to fit in all of the sashes and trophies that Larry’s cattle have won since he started showing in 1976. A quick look through some of the sashes reveals “Best Maintained Team Sydney Royal 1977” and lots of “Most Successful Exhibitor” sashes as well as numerous Interbreed Trophies and sashes from all over the country.
More than a breeder and judge of stud cattle Larry is also an accomplished judge of steers and carcase cattle. Testament to this is the many awards he has won with steers entered into major steer trials and carcase competitions. More often than not his live judging results mirror those on the hooks.
It is Larry’s simplistic approach to breeding cattle that seems to reap the biggest rewards. A cow must produce a calf as good or better than herself every year. If she doesn’t she is not progressing your breeding program and may not be as good as you think she is. It is pointless having a paddock full of beautiful looking cows if the calves are not better performers than their parents.
Bulls need to be structurally sound from their feet to their top lines. Breeding cattle is like building houses “If you don’t get the foundations right what you build on top won’t stay there very long.” Bulls need to excel in the areas that produce money for the commercial cattleman including easy calving and lots of meat in the right places where the major cuts of meat are.
Reflecting on the stud industry as a whole Larry says that sometimes studs forget what their responsibilities to the commercial industry is and it is only through feedback from commercial breeders and abattoirs that corrections to breeding programs take place. In my opinion says Larry the stud industry exists to supply leading genetics to the commercial industry and the real challenge to the stud industry is to be able to continually improve their own genetic performance.
New genetics for the Ebony Lodge herd are sourced from all over Australia and Around the World in a quest to be able to supply superior performance genetics to their customers. Ebony Lodge uses Breedplan but as Larry says they are only one management tool available to producers and should always be used in conjunction with visual appraisal of the cattle.
It is pointless having cattle with Breed Leading EBV’s if they have bad feet or twisted testicles or undershot jaws all of which Larry has seen whilst judging and talking to the breeders later they replied “Don’t worry the figures will sell them”.
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