Donations feed hungry herd

Peter Graham, of Codrington, was one of the dairy farmers who benefited from silage donated and delivered by farmers from Dorrigo.

Peter and Suzanne Graham, of Codrington, downstream of Lismore, welcomed much-needed hay and silage donations from farmers around Dorrigo and Gloucester in mid-March to feed their milking herd.

Since then, they’ve also received an initial $15,000 grant from the Special Disaster grants.

On Sunday afternoon, February 27, Peter milked his herd of 250 cows as usual in the herringbone dairy, then let them into the night paddock.

His property is on the Richmond River, downstream from Lismore and just out of Coraki. He was alerted before daybreak on Monday, February 28, that the flood level upstream of Lismore was above record levels.

Peter drove his tractor to bring his herd up to the dairy for safety. While more than half the herd followed him, 100 cows were reluctant.

“They followed me 200 metres, then they ran back to the gully,” Peter said. “I had to leave them there.”

He was gutted and didn’t know whether these cows would survive the flood, but he had to keep the rest of the herd moving.

He hoped to be able to milk the herd, but the water rose rapidly around the dairy yard and filled the herringbone dairy’s pit.

The cows missed milking from the Monday morning inclusive to Tuesday night, and the back-up generator failed with storm damage on the following Sunday.

At 7.30 on Monday evening, Suzanne and their daughter, Ella, were evacuated by helicopter, while Peter and their son, Brady, slept in a car parked near the dairy. By this time, the family’s house had four inches of water inside it.

“We’d normally have 24 hours’ notice about a flood,” Peter said.

But three catchments filled at once, and a flood that started above Kyogle moved rapidly downstream, spilling out of Richmond and Wilson rivers around Coraki.

“We saw this wall of water 1200mm high coming over the farm,” Peter said.

“I’ll never forget the force of it. It had force moving all the way to Swan Bay.”

Sheds, equipment, the foot valve in the river and pumps were all in the way. Silage, hay and grain were destroyed.

Paddocks are obviously still waterlogged and, with the entire farm flooded, Peter will have to renovate and resow 100 per cent of his farm.

Key will be rebuilding the soil fertility and structure — floodwaters will have robbed his soil of much-needed natural nutrients like phosphorous.

“It was an excessive amount of water, creating a catastrophic amount of damage. Whoever you talk to along this catchment, they’ve been hit hard,” Peter said.

He has lost 20 heifers, five of them close to calving, but is hoping he’ll hear they’re safe, somewhere downstream.

The 100 cows that refused to come out of the gully survived the flood, standing in water up to their loins. Some of them walked out late on the Monday, but 60 stayed there for four days.

They are now close to the dairy, with lameness, sore legs and mastitis. That’s where they’re staying, and Peter uses his tractor to take feed to them every day.

He’s relying on corn and vetch hay he purchased and was delivered after the floodwater started subsiding, and silage and hay donated by other farmers, to feed his cows.

After the flood, three storms helped destroy barley stored in a silo and his remaining silage and hay.

“I’ve never had to accept donated hay before. And I am this time and it’s hard,” Peter said.

“By Tuesday last week I’d received four loads of silage and a load of hay.

“Three loads were out of Dorrigo and delivered by Lions Need for Feed. One load was donated out of Gloucester, organised by a local farmer. I also bought a load of hay from my own normal trader.”

He was able to connect the house and dairy to a generator, so he can turn on lights and milk cows. But the generator hasn’t been connected to hot water, so he’s unable to wash the dairy plant.

At the river, with the foot valve gone, he’s resorted to using his firefighting pump to reticulate water to drinking troughs for his cows.

Peter had to dump milk for a fortnight. Fortunately his supplier, Lactalis, has promised to respect and look after the dairy herd’s production.

“The power not coming on at a timely rate has a huge impact on what we can do,” Peter said.

“We were off grid power for nine days. Anything more than two or three days is unheard of.”

He’s now turning his mind to long-term damage control and is keen to have the local conversation about preparation.

Key to preparation is planning, because infrastructure like concrete pads and levy banks are constructed for generations.

“There’s always going to be flood that’s bigger, but that big flood we can’t prepare for,” Peter said.

“If they want us to prepare for this size of an event, they need to provide us with funding to renovate our properties, such as with a levy as they have in Lismore, to store feed in sheds at a higher level.

“We’re prepared for a normal flood. We’re not prepared for the cyclones and floods that break the normal levies. Then we might need a hand for a catastrophic event.

“We need the actual data to tell us how to plan long term — 50 years and more — when you put a concrete dairy platform down or build a shed on concrete, you need that to be adequate for generations to come.

“And we need accurate data so we can protect our livestock, keep them out of the water and safe. There are people downstream who’ve lost all their cattle.”

Peter said mobile communication from emergency services was inadequate.

He was expected to use his computer to find information about flood heights, when it should have been provided through the emergency app on his phone.

Unfortunately, the computer wasn’t working because of flood damage, nor could he access the internet. Then telephone connection failed on the Wednesday and Thursday.

Because of ongoing NBN failure, as of mid-March he still couldn’t access online forms to apply for emergency funding.

“At the end of the day, I wasn’t prepared for a flood that high,” Peter said.

“We live in a digital world, but we don’t get the service and systems in place to support our needs. [In rural zones] we need a system that handles a large volume of communication.”

Suzanne’s parents are helping the family to clear out their house — finding furniture, shelving and cabinets have expanded from the moisture — and removing mud-soaked carpets.

“Everything smells of mud. It’s in the walls and floors,” Peter said.

Helping is a multi-generational family affair. Peter’s parents are involved with the local Rural Fire Services and are helping other people.

NEED FOR FODDER REMAINS

NSW dairy and livestock farmers delivered 180 wrapped silage bales to farmers in the Coraki, Lismore and Murwillumbah areas as floodwater subsided.

Five farmers donated their time and trucks to deliver the fodder.

Dorrigo farmer Dave Gibson told Dairy News in mid-March they hoped to deliver another two convoys of fodder donations. But their efforts were being hampered by ongoing wet weather, creating access problems.

“From Dorrigo, we were able to get up to Grafton. The Pacific Highway was still closed but the Summerland Way to Casino had opened,” he said.

“We then met up with Darryl Boyd and Dwight Wyatt, who had organised where the silage needed to go and knew how to get it there.”

ABC North Coast reported Wauchope farmer, Andrew Carroll, organised 18 trucks carrying 550 bales of hay, delivered to farms around Lismore and Casino.

Lions Need for Feed Australia’s Graham Cockerill said offers of fodder donations had come from as far afield as Tasmania, Western Australia and New Zealand.

Need for Feed was on the road in February, delivering fodder donations to farmers in the Northern Rivers region of NSW and into south-east Queensland.

Rural Aid is also taking fodder donation inquiries and raised almost $200,000 for flood-affected farmers in 24 hours in early March. Farmers can apply directly to Rural Aid for cash payments and other assistance.