George Moss’s Christmas was a welcome washout

The region was declared a drought zone on 15 December and on the week of 20 December Santa sent us more than 90mm rain over a four-day period with a further 28mm yesterday. This is game-changing rain.

Conventionally, our drought strategy has been to sell 15 in-milk cows. We had established a breakeven price that we needed to achieve, versus the alternative of purchasing extra feed for them. We got that price and the cows left the farm immediately.

We also sold 19 weaner calves and eight yearling heifers for $700 and $1500 net on calves and heifers respectively. We also contracted forward 60t of PKE at a relatively high price. Prices have moved upwards close to $80/t since then with negligible availability.

On the organic farm we did some early culling of “problem cows” and dried six heifers off. The farm is in relatively better shape because of its lower stocking rate and ironically pasture use is still the biggest challenge on that farm.

Production season to date on the farms is down 2.3% and 6.7%, for organic and conventional respectively, both these figures compare very favourably with others in the district with most down in excess of 10%.

Since the rains, all effort has gone into removing as much of the residual dead grass as possible by mowing behind the cows. After a prolonged dry spell any dead grass immediately starts to rot, causing the cows to refuse the pasture. There will be a period of about two weeks of “struggle” till the new tillers have grown enough to provide good nutrition.

Sharon and Daniel were in the USA for Christmas and with staff off there was little time to get lonely. I wish all those farmers reading this a prosperous 2011.

FFLIVEGM