We live, breathe, sleep and eat beef!

Sitting at 1300 metres above sea level 18kms east of Guyra, Henry and Jess MacDougall operate a herd of 850 Angus breeders amongst the granite boulders on their beloved farm Wattletop.  They have a huge passion for all aspects of the beef industry from breeding, growing and eating beef, they love to challenge themselves to raise the bar to produce a better crop of calves each year that are fertile, quiet, fast growing and packed with marbling.  There is nothing more enjoyable for them than spending the day mustering a mob of cows on horses and working them through the yards to then finishing the day sampling the end product, usually home grown and home killed with a glass of red!

Henry and Jess are the fourth generation to farm at Wattletop, taking over the reins in 2018 from Jess’ parents Lock and Trish Rogers.  Lock and Trish founded the Wattletop Angus stud in 1982, starting out with 25 registered cows from Trish’s brother Fred’s Glenavon Angus herd.  The bloodlines of these original cows trace back to the neighbouring Bald Blair Angus cows which are one of the oldest registered Angus herds in Australia.

From 1982 to 2017 Lock grew the Wattletop Angus herd to around 500 registered Angus cows selling around 120 bulls at auction and 50 bulls privately each year.

To facilitate family succession, a dispersal of the stud herd was undertaken in 2017 and 2018. The first sale in 2017 set a new female sale record within the Angus breed with 259 cows selling for an average of $8494.

Through retained embryos and Jess’ existing stud cows, Henry and Jess continued the Wattletop Angus stud herd now trading as Wattletop Livestock. 

Through extensive Embryo transfer and Artificial insemination Henry and Jess have quadrupled their registered herd size over 6 years to calving out 200 stud angus females. Alongside the registered Angus herd, they run 650 commercial angus cows with half joined to Angus bulls and the other to Wagyu bulls sourced from Jess’s father’s Wagyu stud Door Key Wagyu.