Report on Meat & Wool Drought Meeting - Feilding 22 February 2008

Report on Meat and Wool Drought Management Meeting,
Feilding Thursday Feb 22 by P Leigh

Considering the amount of distress within the farming community about the drought, there was a very disappointing turnout at the meeting in Feilding last Thursday organized by Liz Russell of Meat and Wool.

I think the problem is that we know we have to make decisions that will cost us and we’re hoping that if it rains soon we won’t have to do that. Most people have hopefully faced the fact that it IS going to cost and are making some decisions as to what to do about it. As Roy Fraser said, the first cost is the least cost. But many of us don’t want to have to make that first decision. We put it off, and then instead of being a small decision, to take a small loss, it becomes a monumental decision, and the loss is far greater.

It is very obvious that one thing we have to get a handle on is feed budgeting. I know that many of you will say, ‘yeah, we know how to do that’, and the rest of us don’t say anything because we don’t want to admit after two feed budgeting seminars we still don’t know how to do it and we haven’t even tried to use the CD we took home and we feel pretty dumb. So, let’s just bite the bullet right here, admit that most of us just don’t have the necessary feed budgeting skills, and deal with that problem. More on that at the end of this article.

But back to Roy Fraser’s talk. Roy is a farm adviser with PGG Wrightson, Waipukarau, and has had plenty of experience dealing with the Hawkes Bay drought last year. What follows are notes I made from his talk.

The best way to handle a drought is to sell early and buy back early.

The severity of the drought depends on how close we are to winter. In Hawkes Bay they not only had a drought but this was followed by a poor spring and a downturn in returns.

How drought costs you money:
sell stock cheap
buy stock back expensive (unlikely to be cheap stock once it starts to rain)
less stock therefore less income
cost of supplementary feed
lost liveweight
lost production, including deaths (another replacement cost)

Supplementary feed:
Expensive because of dairy pressure on available supplements. Last year you were paying about 33cents/kg DM. This year it’s over 50 cents/kg.
We usually underfeed supplements.

We need to know
feed requirements of our stock
pasture cover now
pasture growth during the drought
predicted pasture growth after the drought

Using this information we can predict what our pasture cover is going to be at any given time. You need to know what your minimum pasture cover needs to be at two critical dates: Beginning of winter (1 May) and end of winter (1 Sept). If you know what your pasture cover is now, what you stock are (or should be) eating, what the growth rate of pasture is, you can calculate what these pasture levels will be.
If you can’t meet your 1 May pasture targets then you have to make decisions:
Feed supplement (Roy went through cost analysis of feeding supplements)
Selling (some) stock (He went through an analysis of what class of stock you are best to sell – eg poor decision to keep older ewes)
Fertiliser – cost of extra growth using N fert is considerably less per Kg DM than bought in supplements. Watch out for nitrate poisoning.
Find grazing for part of your stock (There is grazing out there, you just need to find it, and that may take a lot of work on the telephone but it can be done.)
Let animals lose condition. This is an option, up to a point. Keep in mind it takes a lot of extra feed to put the condition back on.
Reduce stress on stock – top and tail draft (best get less, poorest get more), ensure access to water (Cattle pug up the edges of the dams and cause sheep losses throught getting bogged, or sheep don’t drink at all), set stock, provide shade/shelter, don’t muster unnecessarily.

Supplementary feed:
- makes you feel better
- high cost
- often not enough fed
- may be poorly utilized
- stock prices go lower
- stock lose condition
- use supplement when it rains to help rebuilt pasture cover. Note that rain may make things temporarily worse by causing existing dry matter to rot.

Condition on the animal is better than hay in the barn.
Sowing crops: The later you have to sow, the better off if you sow oats.
In making a decision to sell: consider the cost of keeping the animals and their value at a later date (after prices have gone down further and they have lost condition).

Make decisions. The decision you make at the time is the right decision. In hindsight it may not appear that good, but it’s the right decision at the time.
Make small decisions and small adjustments to your management instead of putting your head in the sand and having a huge decision forced on you later.

Summing up Roy said: Take action, and Persevere!

Ginny Dodunksi from Totally Vets reminded us of the possible animal health problems we might face during a drought and when it starts to rain again.

One comment she made is that “snap dried’ feed is actually still quite good quality feed, so all that looks brown is not necessarily poor quality.

While it’s dry we have low larval challenges (because the larvae are slow to develop in dry conditions or have migrated down into the top few cm of soil to avoid dying. As soon as there is adequate moisture (eg heavy dew or rain), they migrate back out and up the leaf where they are eaten by stock. Watch out for Haemonchus in lambs when this happens. And Trichostrongylus later, after you have drenched for Haemonchus and you have shitty poor doing lambs (Trichostrongylus needs a combination drench, not the long acting ivermecting-family type drench you should be using for Haemonchus)
While it’s dry we have low levels of facial eczema spores. If we get small amounts of warm rain we can expect serious FE problems in some areas.

Animal Health problems we are likely to be seeing now:
Yersinia in weaner deer (vaccinate)
Salmonella in sheep (vaccinate)
Barbers pole worm (Haemonchus) – esp after it rains but even if we just have heavy dews. FEC your 2 ths to check worm burdens. FEC will be too late to prevent serious losses in lambs.
Plant poisonings
Viral pneumonia (dusty yards, stressed animals mouth breathing)
Polio in calves (usually with sudden diet change). Apparently blind. Easily treated with Vit B1 (thiamine) injection.
Grain overload (start with 20% of the amount animals actually need and build up)
Nitrate poisoning (esp green feed crops, short rotation rye, esp if cloudy weather, and esp in preg animals)
After rain:
Parasite problems
FE (Time Capsule gives 6 wks protection for sheep, 4 wks for cattle)

Note that poor condition ewes lose significant resistance to parasites.

Comments from Jonny O’Sullivan, Westpac

Talk to your bank early
Don’t underestimate the importance of fertilizer
Interest rates are rising
Go for fixed rates rather than floating as these are cheaper.

MWNZ are running FeedSmart Feed Planning Workshops throughout the country There are 2 levels plus the Farmax workshops. The first two levels are very inexpensive. ($40 and $20) Farmax is $540.