HISTORY

PALGROVE CHAROLAIS was founded by Peter & Valerie Bondfield and is one of Australia’s original Charolais studs, with the first Charolais X calves born in 1970. The cattle were originally upgraded from quality Shorthorns and Brahman females.

From the beginning, we believed that we had to adapt the French Charolais cattle to fit Australia’s commercial environment, so established a strict culling programme based on birth weight, calving ease and body shape. To this we added fast growth and medium maturity. This resulted in a functional “Palgrove type” Charolais that exists in the herd today – cattle with natural doing ability that are highly fertile. 

 In the mid 1990’s we recognised that further adaption was needed to balance the Charolais muscle and add fat cover to fit market specifications. Palgrove was one of the first breeders to utilise Ultrasound scanning and DNA markers to identify pedigrees that could deliver on both of these in a balanced package.

We now input more than twice as much scan data and weight information than any other Charolais breeder in Australia and the accuracy of our Breedplan figures is extremely high.

Our bull breeding programme continues to evolve with the needs of our clients directly driving our selections. Palgrove has extended its genetic base beyond the purebred Charolais and now offers a range of options to commercial beef producers with our Charolais/Angus; Charolais/Shorthorn, Charbray and our newly designed Ultrablack^TM Brangus bulls.