What does a dairy farm, a feed business, a trucking business, and a service station all have in common? The entrepreneurialism of one farming family.
Brad Teese is one of those blokes who, if you look at everything he’s involved in, you can’t help but wonder how on earth it all happened. It’s Brad’s general “up for anything” attitude that helped him find a path early on in life, and go on to tar down and upkeep umpteen different paths off that original. And he loves it.
“At the end of the day, if you keep yourself open to different people and different opportunities you make a whole lot of your own luck - not just for you but for the people around you too. That’s how I like to look at it,” Brad says.
It all started for Brad growing up on a dairy farm in Veresdale, Queensland. Brad’s a fourth generation farmer, and he says his father probably could not have loved his animals more.
“I mean, you tell me, right,” he laughs. “Dad got up at midnight every night in his jammies and gumboots to go check on his cows before he had to get up a couple of hours later to start milking. Now, I left home when I was 18, and my sister when she was 21. I’m pretty certain he never once got up for us!”
Before leaving home, Brad left school at 15 and started work with a fencing contractor as well as helping his father on the dairy. It was during this time that Brad discovered he was pretty good with machinery, and he also enjoyed getting out and about, meeting different people and learning about life beyond the farm.
Over time this approach led him into grain carting, which then led to buying his own truck as well as trying his hand at some grain trading; leasing irrigation and cultivation; buying a service station; and getting involved in share farming down in Moree, New South Wales.
Through all of this, the dairy farm was his main concern but as the dairy industry started to shrink, the family realised they had to diversify their key business.
“We also had the trucking business, and dairying and transport are probably the two hardest industries to be in.
“In January 2000 there were 1,545 dairy farms in Queensland and there’s now 270. Every 5.4 days another dairy shuts down, because you never get to a point where you’d ever be able to make a return. When you consider that in Queensland alone we consume 600 million litres of milk, and the average farm only produces 1 million litres, there’s a fair bit of gap there. Most of that now comes from Victoria.”
The family banded together and set up Teese Feeds in Beaudesert, a small stockfeed company that mainly services the equine and cattle feed markets.
Brad says he’s always been concerned with animal nutrition, primarily borne out of his own needs on the dairy farm but, he says, that concern meant that it can now flow on to benefit his customers.
“The feed always achieves what it’s supposed to. People can see what a difference a good feed and a good premix makes. And for us, it’s always nice when a customer tells you that they can see a change in the coat or in performance.”
There’s more business initiatives on the horizon, but Brad’s staying mum about those for the time-being. He does offer this little morsel of advice, however.
“If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.”