After a dry autumn, many areas have received some welcome rain but uncertainty still remains across the majority of our dairying regions.
In South Australia farmers are currently experiencing a green drought.
Fleurieu Peninsula dairy farmer Mandy Pacitti said rain over the next month will be critical for the season ahead and the future of the industry.
“The reality is we are receiving a good milk price but our costs have just skyrocketed due to drought conditions,” Mandy said.
“We are being slammed on so many different levels.”
She said their business, which will peak at 280 cows, is facing an estimated $100,000 fodder shortfall this month.
The family have been feeding a feed mix of almond husk, potatoes, oat husk, brewers grain and malt combings, along with some silage to extend their home-grown fodder.
“We have dryland paddocks we haven’t been able to graze at all and we have now shut them up and will try and keep them for hay and silage — if we had grazed them, we would have nothing left,” Mandy said.
She said farmers are actively talking to the SA Department of Primary Industries and looking at options to drought-proof the state and prevent a year like 2024-25 ever happening again.
For Ebony Mull from Gundowring, in north-east Victoria, the season ahead is now looking promising.
“We have had consistent rainfall over July of 150mm and some good drizzling rain which has soaked in and we have started to get some good growth,” Ebony said.
She said their dairy business had previously fallen into the trap of hanging onto animals for too long when the season was uncertain, so in autumn they offloaded 30 underperforming cows and dried off their spring calving cows early.
“We also sold our beefies to make room for our young stock.”
Ebony said as a Mountain Milk supplier she was happy with her milk price.
“We have people whose job is to represent us when negotiating our milk price so we can just focus on running our farms — the co-op fight for us,” she said.
In the NSW Riverina and northern Victoria, high temporary water prices are creating a few sleepless nights for farmers reliant on the temporary water market.
Koondrook dairy farmer Skeeta Verhey said he was happy with his milk price but commodity prices remain a major concern.
“There will be pressure on hay and grain reserves, especially from areas like western Victoria and I am a bit nervous,” Skeeta said.
“Our allocation has been slow to start and people are sitting on the fence about whether or not to buy into the temporary market; there seems to be a lot of water coming into the system below us.”
On the positive side, Skeeta said northern Victoria has had three good seasons and hopefully farmers have some reserves up their sleeves.
“People may have chewed through some of their surplus due to the dry autumn and water use was probably higher for most, but the red meat market remains good to help with cash flow.”
Riverina farmer Brett Napier said good early spring rains will help set the job up for the year ahead, but high water prices remained a worry.
"Milk prices are better than this time last year and we had some field officers come out the other day and they said there is a possibility of a step-up, so things could get better yet,“ Brett said.
“Some farmers are struggling to stay on top and an increase in milk price will help.”
Their dairy business has just invested in collars for their 300-cow herd in the hope of lifting conception rates and milk production.
“We will keep poking along, the collars have been a big investment for us and our business,” Brett said.
Like all farmers, Brett is hoping for a bumper spring to build up stock reserves and put some silage and hay away for the seasons ahead.
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