Drought resilience for a mixed farming enterprise

Introduction

Laurie and John Chaffey run a 2,500 hectare mixed farming enterprise of beef cattle, sheep, and cropping in the North West region south of Tamworth. 

Through lessons learnt and their practical experience dealing with previous dry times, Laurie and John took a proactive approach to drought preparedness to help them survive the recent drought.  

Challenge 

When drought occurs, being prepared and having the capability to respond to seasonal conditions can help ensure the long-term success of a farming enterprise.  

The Chaffeys wanted to ensure they had a plan to ensure the best possible outcome to manage dry times that would allow them to act early, reassess regularly, and adapt as each step was implemented.  

Solution  

The Chaffeys developed their drought plan based on carefully assessing what the feed requirements would be for their livestock during drought conditions, with a focus on production rather than just maintenance feeding of stock.  

Over many years, the Chaffeys have always aimed to have a certain amount of stored feed on hand, to keep livestock going for at least two seasons if dry times occurred, without relying on existing pastures.  

Going into the drought, they had grain stored on-farm, including oats that had been stored underground for more than 20 years, and also grain stored in the silo system. They had a reserve of hay available and added cottonseed purchased off-farm to add nutritional value to the roughage when supplementary feeding.  

Laurie and John carefully considered what existing resources were on hand and assessed the financial bottom line for implementing different courses of action in their planning process. They enacted their plans using a step by step approach, realistically reviewing their progress at each stage and reassessing and adapting their strategies as needed to stay on track.  

They gradually reduced livestock numbers as the drought continued, regularly assessing the situation every few months, and made further decisions based on the seasonal conditions.  

Cattle numbers were selectively reduced slowly in stages as the drought progressed. Any non-performing cows were sold first and, as conditions worsened, they eventually sold cows that were not going to calve within a six week calving window in consultation with their local vet.  

They started an early weaning program for calves at around 160kg, which helped the cows keep their condition, managing the weaners separately to meet their nutritional requirements.  

After carefully considering their budget, the Chaffeys realised that selling young cattle during the drought was a better option rather than finishing for the market as they usually would as they didn’t have the feed resources and, it was too labour intensive for them to manage.  

Sheep numbers were also reduced, with the whether portion of their flock sold off after shearing. They did, however, decide to keep their core breeding flock of Merino ewes and continued to sell off fattened lambs after confinement feeding in ‘sacrifice’ paddocks.  

These confinement areas enabled them to manage ewe nutrition at crucial times such as pre-joining and pre-lambing and kept the ewes at the right score condition, which saw a much higher lamb survival rate. It also enabled the Chaffeys to maintain critical groundcover (as best they could given the conditions) and avoid placing excessive grazing pressure on pastures. 

Outcomes  

The Chaffeys knew that whilst you can never fully be prepared for extended drought periods, taking the time to develop a plan, implementing that plan and staying the course when the time came would help them best manage the adverse seasonal conditions.  

Their forward planning and practical management strategies helped their beef, sheep and cropping enterprise stay in production. 

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Video transcript

Case study: Being prepared and planning for drought

[Music]

hi

everyone welcome to our series of um

drought case studies across the north

west region

today I'm here with Laurie and John Chaffey

from the Summerton area my name's Kate

McCarthy and

I'm a northwest local land services

livestock officer which I should have said but yeah here with

Laurie and John and we're just talking about some

of the strategies that they

implemented over the drought and some of

the things that

I guess some of the lessons that they've

picked up and and what they'll

they'll utilize moving forward even in a

good season so

Laurie and John Chaffey own a mix farming enterprise

they run sheep cattle and have cropping

they have 2700 hectares of yeah mixed farming

country

beautiful at the moment and yeah we

found it really

valuable having a chat to them about

some of the things they've

picked up and learned and i guess what

we pulled out of having the discussion

was

that they really have an emphasis on

preparedness and planning

um you know implementing those plans but

taking the time to to put them in place

john i'm going to ask you about i'm

going to ask you about some of the

things around feed base some of

the strategies that you've just

mentioned to me earlier about

what you implemented from a storage um

both hay and grain and some of those

things so if you want to touch on that

yeah so over a number of years of

farming and cropping sort of thing and

livestock stuff we've been worked out

that our strategy

involves trying to have a certain amount

of feed on hand

whether and that will be hay and grain

to

keep our production system going through

at least two seasons and possibly more

if we can

and so in going into this drought we

actually had quite a bit of grain stored

on farm

some still in the grain corp system and

some hay

as well and so we we tend to use

those things we've we bought in cotton

seed

at various stages depending on what our

feed base was

we also actually have a fever to curry

jung country and we

utilize that probably not by itself but

always put

either cotton seed or grain or something

with the carry junk which we generally

use just for cattle as well

Planning for drought

so we sort of we'll do up our our plans

on how much feed we think we're going to

need

to get through to a certain point so and

our key points are carving weaning

joining and those sort of things and so

we'll do a bit of a plan as to what we

do

we'll try and have enough grain to

and hay on hand to do at least like I've

said

six to 12 months at a time uh

other issues what have i missed no i

think when we were talking about before

something i found interesting was with

the storage side of things like you guys

talked about like you you obviously um

had hey

uh sorry silage was it silage grain

grain stored

20 years yeah um but one of the

challenges

Challenges

or I'll let you talk about the chair so

that was right so we put some years ago

we had a surplus of oats so we dug pits

put it in the ground

and this time we got to dig it out which

all created new challenges for us into

how to handle it and getting it out

but that grain was still as good as the

day we put it in there still had as much

rye grass in it as when we put it in

no weevils or anything a bit of weather

contamination around the edges

but yeah we needed to learn how to

remove that grain um we've since

actually

acquired a grain back or the family of

the quite a grain vac which will help us

do that again and we'll be prepared to

bury grain again yeah

we should need to yeah and that'll

become a strategy for us

yeah to deal with it yeah and just one

one more thing is that

we're talking about the hay side of

things and i said oh you know

with your hay stories you like to have

your hay sheds full and you're oh well

not at the moment but it's one of the

things that you really

strive for yeah yeah no well planted

hopefully we've got

paddock put a side of eights now this

year we'll

make into hay we'll probably bail some

straw behind the harvest

header as well to just have some

roughage to go with

rations and things so yeah no excellent

thanks john

um and now yeah we'll talk to laurie

about one of her passions i guess

cows um we when we were talking about

our case study we broke it up into

certain components like a bit of a whole

farm thing so

touch on the feed base but yeah

obviously step into the animal side of

things so

so Laurie what what were some of the

strategies around

you know your cattle enterprise that you

implemented and what you

like the lessons that you've pulled out

of that thanks Kate

Management

um we started probably with too many

cows

something that we said after a previous

drought we wouldn't do but circumstances

meant

we had um more than we wanted we

again assessed depending on the cycle

they were at whether they were

pre-joining

whether they were carving whether they

were weaning at what management we would

do

with our cows we always try to balance

that up with what we

anticipated would be the feed we don't

really like

feeding cows full you know full we'd

rather

balance that up so we did some budgets

early out

and then we decided with the help of our

vet

um as to any cows that we're not going

to carve within a six

week window and we sold them that was

very traumatic

very sad but it has had positive

spin-offs

we carved those out when we started

through the drought

we also have a um fattening mob

like our wieners that go through we keep

our heifers and then we usually fatten

out

steers we then started to target

feedlots like for our stairs instead of

finishing them

again doing the budgets what it was

worth to fatten them what we had the

feed and that but

we didn't really have the manpower like

to do it we had the resources

except for the manpower and when we did

the budgets it was easier to

just to sell them at that point in time

with our heifers um we feed for

production so we wanted to feed so they

had enough weights to

join but we sold them

we decided to sell them so that we could

focus on our um

cows and our production again keeping

production in mind

getting help along the way is really

beneficial

um so we did do some lls workshops which

with was really helpful reading

the the drought strategy bibles um

looking up information talking to people

getting all that support is really

really helpful

early ween so um early wean

is pretty um heart-wrenching for some of

us

but um we our youngest weaning weight

was probably around about 160 so it's

not as

as light as what some other people do uh

and then we just managed them instead of

um

yeah just making sure we matched up

their nutrition

one of the things we well we did but we

shouldn't have done it was

we didn't mark um the bull calf

until two bit too late so again

if we had our time again in the future

we would actually use probably rings

and maybe settle them down and then um

use rings and and mark them definitely

not leave the

the marking till as late as what we did

yeah and uh and again

feed for production try and aim for

where you're going

have a plan uh where you want to go

reassessing your cows focus on your cow

weight

condition um making sure that they're in

that you know

increase it to to be able to join so our

joining percentages

are pretty high um and then anything

that doesn't

carry their weight so they've got to

have a calf got to get back and calf if

they don't they get to go

yep um yeah i think that's probably

pretty much

how it all goes the other day yeah we

like yeah again when we were having a

talk about this

one of the things that i really enjoyed

about the decisions that you guys made

was that you

you know at that point in time you said

when you know when it came to looking at

tightening your carving

you seen an opportunity there and you

acted on it um

and that followed through each and as

you might see like you guys are

listening

a recurring theme is planning and being

you know thinking you know reassessing

that plan every

every couple of months so that was the

plan titan carving and that's followed

through

to weaning and the plans that you made

around weaning early waning

the nutrition strategy in in the cows

and and you said you've

like yeah the carved the mobber calves

that you you early wayne did doing

really well now so

yeah yeah yeah so that's um it's

definitely

it's really interesting to see from that

side of things john back to you

from the sheep side of things a few key

points

Steps

uh i guess one thing that we haven't

probably seen it is that

we tend to do things uh in steps

and so instead of doing everything

in one go with like we cut out of cow

numbers back slowly when the sheep side

of things

we we chose to keep our core breeding

herd

being flocked to where it was normally

and then sold our weathers off or sold

our lambs off or fattened our lambs

we actually confined land one year

um we've we'd try and keep we had we

started with having sacrificed paddocks

um and fed in those sacrifice paddocks

they

reached the point where they were no

more viable to lamington so we then land

into smaller pens

we'll probably not try lamb in smaller

pens we can but

again if we can avoid it but if we

and learnt that by keeping your u score

fat score to that three and a half prior

lambing you can probably land in a

paddock whereas if

you usually lose too much condition you

may have to

confine them to land them but there

again if they were in good condition to

be confined they would probably have a

lot

much higher land survival rate by having

good scores

yep um where else was i going with the

so we gradually reduced our weather mobs

down

with sort of sheer fat and sheer fat and

shear fat into

and have we've actually the first time

we've not had weathers on our weather

block in

30 years so that's sort of there's the

significance of that drought to us

and now we will probably either breed

our own back up

or restock our weather

maybe if we can find something so that

yeah and i think

yeah the nutritions are is one of the

key things that we could pick up from

that like you guys were

all over that from a from a condition

score side of things and

and we're aware of how much

condition scores influenced by nutrition

and i think a lot of people

during the drought just we became aware

about how

it is a challenge to manage it quite you

know so

that's a really good point to take from

that like you just said everybody

learnt a whole lot about animal

nutrition it's out of this strap that's

one thing this drought taught people

how we can how to feed and we learned

how to feed far more

efficiently than we yeah we did

previously i think um

just an add to that kate is the planning

and um

and having some sort of distraction i

know this is not but we used to have

smokos and it might sound really

ridiculous but

it was just where we came together and

um we our son

Thomas was working with us as well we

would just

have down time just review just go where

are we at

and then stick to your plans so in

talking to him we said well what's the

takeaway message

do a plan stick to your plan and get

help like get other people

to information from other people so that

you were making those plans with the

very best

of information you possibly could and um

and

you know it's it's okay yeah yeah yeah

I think that summarized it pretty well

Laurie like

yeah one of the things is obviously all

the lessons that

everyone learnt throughout the drought

but they're from a from an individual

like as

as people not not so much the enterprise

but as people

what was important for you guys and that

was taking time out

so if you could say you know in a couple

of words

you know both of you what would you say

out of this whole

thing john just

plan yeah plan and stick to your plan i

think that was all you can do

and try and i guess our other thing was

we we tried to remain with some

degree of productivity yes probably not

full productivity but

have some productivity and have your

base so that when it is over

you've got something to go on with yeah

and i guess

unfortunately with a cropping enterprise

i mean we've missed our crops

but we've actually got the ability to

put a bit more cropping country in

to help get our pasture base back on

some of our sacrifice paddocks and

things like that which we haven't

spoken about earlier but that's yeah and

Laurie

what would you say just plan plan plan

talk to people

yeah stay focused um probably have a bit

more time out even if it just means

getting in a car and driving up the road

for an hour or so

yeah um yeah that's probably pretty much

review

and what this is really good i find this

really

valuable to reassess yeah and certainly

this sort of case study project i would

have really enjoyed that

during um the dry time just to go and

go oh there is a human part to this

whole thing

and people are important and um yeah so

just uh the planning we did have

weddings as distractions

um but it was it's just everybody

together and being supported

and making those decisions yeah being on

the front foot

i think and and hopefully these case

studies will will help

if we if we have to encounter it again

then something like this will help

um other producers in the region or

anywhere

with with some of the decisions they

have to make so thank you for your time

i really appreciate it and thanks for

listening in

What you can do 

Being prepared for drought and having a step by step plan of action gives you the capability to respond to seasonal conditions in the best possible way.  

Plan with the very best information available to you, seek support and advice from knowledgeable sources. 

Develop a drought plan that is based on a realistic assessment of the situation, and not an underestimate of the resources available. This is integral to the success of any farming enterprise.  

Make strategic drought decisions that take into consideration the economic merit of each management option and balance this with the objectives and budget of your plan. This will help the business stay financially viable for the long term.  

Reassess periodically, adapt to the conditions to keep on track and stick to your plan. 

Take time out for yourself and your family to manage your mental well-being.  

Focusing on animal nutrition is important. Pregnancy testing cows can be a great tool to help ensure cows are given the correct nutrition at various stages of pregnancy. 

Although full productivity cannot be achieved, a level of productivity is still possible so that when the drought is over, you have something to build on and keep the enterprise going.