Dealing with Drought.

By Mark Gubbins, Coolana Angus.

It’s been a very long time since we have had a season that we have had to call a drought, 24 years in fact. Now with only 315 mm of rain from an average of 535mm and a very failed spring we are definitely in a drought. At Coolana we have been making decisions and acting them out since early September to help us deal with what we knew was looming ahead. Now we are in a round of feeding, more feeding and maintenance and hope. Hope that nature will be kind enough to give us an early break and a good season to regain from the losses of this year. This is how we are dealing with the drought.

Water – The drought in 2002/3 made us build up our water supply to a sustainable system. Then we had about 7 windmills of varying capacities and in those days we spent a lot of time carting water. Now we have 2 major bores, both with back up capacity. Tanks all have level indicators and a remote tank has a mobile phone that text messages 4 mobiles when the water gets low. We are using more water than we have for a number of years so pumps are an issue, backups will be relied on if failure occurs and hasty repairs to keep pumping. Ninety percent of our water points can be checked quickly by driving our laneway system and simply looking into troughs and at tank gauges.

Sheep – If sheep were not as profitable as they have been, I would not persevere with them. They are the first to break up the country and are like ants at a haystack when feeding them. However the tough decisions were made to early wean winter lambs and sell older ewes before the numbers started to increase. This removed 1000 mouths from the property. The lambs were put on the best country and never looked back, most now gone to slaughter in better condition and earlier than normal, I like this early weaning.

Our spring lambs were early weaned to protect the body weight of the ewe and provide the best feed we could to these lambs. With 1200 of these lambs in the feedlot and the rest out on failed spring Barley crops we will turn these out at the normal turn off times at very similar weights. All our breeding ewes are now in sacrifice paddocks, between 700 and 2000 ewes in 10 Ha, being feed Barley daily and hay 2 times a week. They will stay like this until it rains and we have natural feed again. All lambs were weaned under the ELMS early weaning protocol.

Crops – These have provided us with extra feed all through the winter and now into the spring and summer, in fact they are the feed Buffer that we so badly need. This year we will make no money from our 1500 acre cropping program, it however has saved us a fortune on feedstuffs. We direct grazed 200 acres of Canola at intense stocking rates very successfully, Baled 150 acres for hay and Harvested 200 acres to achieve a whopping 23 tons of Canola. All Wheat was cut for Silage and hay because of server frost damage. We started cutting Barley for hay, but with a real need for grain, and looking around for ideas, came across a new header with a baler closely attached with the straw not touching the ground until it is in a bale. I commend the Mann Family from Quambatook for this innovation. If I had known about it earlier I would not have cut any Barley or Canola for hay but direct baled it with this fantastic machine. We have now got 1100 square bales of Barley straw and 400 bales Canola straw. The best answer to stubble retention I have ever seen.

Cattle – These are my favorite animals but still have to perform under commercial conditions. They are not as trying as Sheep and have a personality of their own. Because many of our cattle are pedigree seed stock breeders we get to know many of them on an individual basis. Most of our calves are born In August and September; we have adopted an early weaning strategy for our cattle. We need to maintain body condition on our cows to get them through the severity of the next 4 to 6 months depending on the break. Currently cows are weighing 550 to 600 kg at weaning, we are pleased with this. Once the calf is weaned we treat our cows as dry stock. They require half the amount of feed once the calf is weaned.

Calves are weaned under the ELMS early weaning protocol and kept in the yards for 7 to 10 days. Calves over 140 kgs are being trucked to Hamilla Downs, a property at Meningie that we bought early in 2006. Calves under 140kgs are being kept at Coolana and feed daily to increase weight to 140 kgs and then will be trucked.

Our bulls are being fed silage as always before, we want to maintain our integrity of only feeding a grass based diet get these animals to sale, so our clients don’t have any let down problems when we deliver a new bull too them.

Our genetic program has rolled on with no cuts to it due to the low income year. We have to maintain our genetic focus appreciating that we are looking 3 years ahead.

In summary its going to be tough for us all, we are working with less labour and extra work loads because of feeding. Our income is going to be way down and we are already sick of the dust, but we will survive to see another year, we have a good attitude and hope the next months roll on as quickly as time will allow. If you are looking for Angus genetics we need your help, please Consider Coolana for some of your genetic needs.