My vote goes to the arid heart of Australia, where you'll find the Fuller Family's De Rose Hill Station and a herd of 2,000 straightbred commercial Angus cows. De Rose Hill is located approximately 220 miles south of Alice Springs, and roughly the same distance southeast of Ayers Rock. This is dry, isolated, scrub brush-covered country where nocturnal kangaroos graze in the daytime and wild dingoes stalk calves, injured livestock and wild rabbits at night. Here, where cattle ranches are known as stations, the Fullers' commercial Angus herd grazes over 700 square miles of country. That's an average of 224 acres per cow, and sometimes it is not enough.
Moisture is at best unpredictable and, in some seasons, nonexistent.
For example, in 1988 it rained 14 inches in seven hours. The deluge formed a lake in one of the pastures that took six months to evaporate. Then came 1994 with only 2 inches of rain for the entire year. The total jumped to 3.5 inches in 1996, according to Rex Fuller. Yet De Rose Hill Station produces some of the best Angus feeder cattle in the country.