Jason Roberts, a dairy farmer at Yarragon in southern Victoria, doesn’t see anything that helps him in the Victorian Government’s drought response package.
He needs rain.
He is also concerned about how long it will take him to recover the number of milking cows in his herd.
Jason farms with his parents, Graeme and Betty Roberts, on the family dairy farm in central Gippsland.
They normally milk 130 cows in a mixed herd of Friesian and Australian Red breeds.
The herd is autumn calving and joined using artificial insemination.
“We’re also using all polled semen nowadays,” Jason said.
“We AI all our heifers too. We match like with like. With the cows, I don’t want to breed replacement heifers from, I use Angus semen to produce dairy beef calves.”
Calving finished in early June this year.
The family milks twice a day in a 13-a-side herringbone shed, that was built by Graeme.
These days, Jason is the lead milker, assisted by Betty, and Graeme provides support with tractor work.
As the drought started impacting their Gippsland farm, they started reducing the milking herd.
“We cut back to 100 cows,” Jason said.
“I culled out the empty and older cows as the seasonal drought conditions unfolded.”
All cows were sold straight to the abattoir at Trafalgar.
“I used to sell through the saleyards at Warragul and Pakenham, until they were shut down,” Jason said.
“I don’t like putting stress on the animal by sending it to saleyards further afield.
“It’s less stress to sell direct to the abattoir at Trafalgar. It’s only a few kilometres away.”
In the drought affecting Gippsland this year, one of Jason’s fodder strategies has paid off.
“Every year I cut excess hay and silage. It’s money in the bank,” he said.
“We’ve had no pasture growth since January, and we’ve been feeding the milking herd every day from our fodder stores. We’ve prioritised feeding the hay and silage to our milkers.”
This has created some concern for Jason because every year he raises his replacement heifers.
This year, he is considering putting off joining the rising-two-year-old heifers because they are backwards from where he wants them to be at this time of the year.
That is a direct result of the lack of pasture growth through summer and autumn.
“So I’m thinking about holding off for a few months, and joining them for spring calving next year,” he said.
That comes with consideration for how long he can carry through what effectively becomes a second milking herd, before he brings them back into line with the cow herd.
It also means he will have to keep feeding the heifers for a longer period before they can become productive.
Without good pasture to graze, the heifers’ condition is behind where it should be for him to AI them.
“If I AI them for spring calving, it’ll take two years to get them back into sync with the milking herd,” Jason said.
For Jason and his parents, the lack of soil moisture is also affecting a second income stream for their business.
In a normal year, Jason grows out the beef-dairy calves. As this season’s calving comes to an end, he needs to decide if he will sell them as vealers.
Normally, he grows the beef-dairy calves out to 500-600kg. He sold the previous cohort earlier than those target weights, to take the pressure off his fodder stores and rest as many paddocks as possible.
He now has this season’s new Angus-dairy cross calves in the shed.
“I run dairy-beef heifers and steers on the bush block,” Jason said.
“I think I’ll have to sell them into the vealer market.
“I also have one-year-old dairy heifers coming along, and this year’s dairy heifer calves.”
There is a lot of competition for prioritising what animals are kept for long-term feeding.
“On the creek flat, there’s enough pick for the heifers, but on the rest of the farm and the bush block, we need rain,” Jason said.
“We need rain so that we can capture water in our dams.”
Which is why Jason sees the Victorian Government’s announcement in May of a grant to support pasture renovation as out-of-step with reality and poorly timed.
“Putting in new pastures now is pretty useless, because it’s very cold in winter,” Jason said, in early June.
He also doesn’t employ contractors for re-seeding pastures, because the family owns all the machinery they need for this purpose.
For online-only stories about the drought in southern Victoria, go to: https://www.dairynewsaustralia.com.au