As a part of this day we covered the below three questions to get us all thinking about the upcoming potential dry season.

1. What worked well in your business during the last dry time?
2. What did not work well for you in the last dry time?
3. How are you using your experience from past dry times to make decisions now?

These are great questions for anyone to be considering currently and we encourage everyone to answer these questions for themselves. Below are some of the answers from the group which could help when you need to start making decisions if the current weather conditions persist.

• What worked well in your business during the last dry time?
  • Feed budgeting – grass inventory regularly measured
  • Prices – Opportunity
  • Graze in 1 group – single mob
  • Confinement Feeding
  • Early weaning
  • Cutting expenses
  • Peer network – grazing meetings – support network
  • Outside advice
  • Grazing charts/plan – helped with decision making
  • Destocking early – after feed budgeting
  •  Diversifying the business
  • Knowing your long-term goals
  • Leaving good ground-cover allowed early opportunities when rains came

• What did not work well for you in the last dry time?
  • Stress
  • Letting emotions get in way of making decisions / love stock / not wanting to sell them
  • Not early weaning
  • Delaying decision making for too long
  • Buying hay
  • Maintenance Feeding
  • Cashflow reduced
  • Benchmark was too high on grazing planning
  • Restocking decisions (high prices of stock delay getting back into market)
  • Holding on to stock for too long
  • Water infrastructure

• How are you using your experience from past dry times to make decisions now?
  • Utilising the feed budgeting, trusting grazing charts and making decisions
  • Not thinking about what will happen if it does rain. More important to think what if it doesn’t rain.
  • Using technology to aid in decision making
  • Leaving feed, maintaining groundcover
  • Preparing early
  • Working on being rain ready
  • Taking the time to plan better
  • Grass monitoring – more experience this time
  • Upgrading water infrastructure
  • Not being too optimistic in business planning
  • Flexibility in enterprise in order to take advantage of opportunities
  • Matching stocking rate to available grass now

We would like to thank Matt & Tamara Pearce for opening their farm to attendees, Andrew Dowd from RCS – Resource Consulting Services and Mid Lachlan Landcare’s very own Scott Hickman and Andrew Wooldridge for facilitating the event. If you have any questions or want to find out more about any of the things listed above please contact us midlachlanlandcare@gmail.com

RCS Consulting Services also have a free on-line course running at the moment which may be of interest RCS Drought Preparedness.