On-farm drought management

Get practical advice to manage drought on your property. Learn how to assess conditions, plan ahead and protect your land and livestock.

a herd of drought affected sheep in a feeding area
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Drought management strategies

Every farm is different, so producers need to make drought decisions that suit their land and production system.

Start by gathering as much information as you can. Assess your property, livestock and water. Consider your feed and management options. Talk to your family, workers, agents or advisors.

Use this information to create a drought management strategy and make clear decisions.

Managing your farm through drought helps you understand its limits and strengths. It also prepares you for future climate challenges.

Local Land Services can assist with advice and access to the tools farmers need to plan and manage drought.

Feed and breed webinar - May 2026

During this webinar, you'll learn about:

  1. feeding – basic nutrition and requirements of reproductive cattle and how to develop feeding programs during dry times
  2. breeding – the genetic selection and identification of your best females and how to choose complementary bulls
  3. herd decision making and management for optimal genetic retention and maximum financial outcomes during dry times.
1: 49:05

Feed and Breed webinar

This webinar discusses herd planning and nutritional management during drought.

Read transcript
Video transcript

Feed and Breed webinar

I think we'll kick off. I don't want to keep you all longer than necessary because I know everyone's pretty flat chat at the moment. Just to let you all know that we are recording this today and the recording has now started. Thank you for joining us for our Feed and Breed webinar this morning. I'm Naomi Hobson. I'm the team leader for Sustainable Agriculture and Plant Biosecurity with North West Local Land Services. And joining me to present today is Matt Lieschke, who's the Senior Ag Advisor for the State Drought Adoption Team, and Sally Baumain, who's our Senior Livestock Officer, local here in the North West.

I'd like to start today by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land and waters on which we meet today. For us in Narrabri, that's the Kamilaroi people, and to extend that respect to the traditional owners of the lands and waters where each of you are joining us from today.

So these webinars, the Feed and Breed actually started as a series of workshops that we ran through the end of February and early March in response to the drying conditions that we're experiencing in the northwest. As you all know, this drying pattern has continued and has extended further. So we are running the webinar to be able to cover off that information for more people who were interested and not able to make it to the workshop. So thank you very much for joining us today. We'll have a recording going out, so please feel free to share that among anyone that would find it valuable that you know of as well.

I think one thing that's been positive from our perspective to see, we've had these record numbers hitting yards at the moment, but it's been positive to see people being very proactive with their decision making and how they're managing their herds. And hopefully today we can provide you with some practical information to help you with those decisions and also the feeding that you're doing on farm.

The contact details for each of us will be included at the end, so please reach out with any further questions you have after the webinar, or if you have a bit of time to think on what we've covered and you would like any assistance with either feeding plans or just someone to talk through what you're thinking, that's what we're here for, so please let us know.

A little housekeeping before we start, your microphones are automatically muted. We do that just so that we don't get any background noise coming through the presentations. If you have any questions throughout any of the presentations, if you see at the top there's a box that says chat, you can pop your questions into there and we'll ask those. We will do questions after each of us presents, so you'll have an opportunity to ask those then, but if something pops up and you don't want to forget it, just put it in the chat box and we'll cover those off at the end of the presentation.

We're going to be covering off on livestock scenario planning, managing your breeding herd and also covering nutrition and confinement feeding today. So before I hand over, I just also wanted to let you know that we have our Northwest Beef Producers coming up on the 13th of May at the Tamworth Jockey Club. We've got a really good lineup of speakers here that's very much focused around trying to get you facts for the current seasonal outlook and market forecasts to just help get rid of some of the noise that's out there at the moment through the media and social media and just general conversation.

So we're going to have Eric Snodgrass who's a nutrient senior science fellow doing a tailored seasonal forecast. Simon Quilty will be doing market analysis for us. He works with AgriTrends and is a global market analyst. We're going to have a representative from Halter there talking on virtual fencing. We'll be covering off on a University of New England decide and Thrive project. Teys will be there providing some information from their perspective on supply chains and we'll also going to be doing some face-to-face confinement feeding work there, which may be valuable for you.

In addition to having a number of companies there for networking and trade fair. So the day is free. We'll pop a link to register in the chat, but please join us for that if you're able to as well. And I'll hand over to Matt Lieschke now who's going to cover off on our forecasting. Thanks, Naomi.

I'll attempt to share my screen and hopefully this all works. Yep, that looks good, Matt. Righty-o. Thanks, Naomi, and good morning, everyone.

So just to kick things off today, I was going to have a look at the difficult decision that producers face in drought and particularly for breeders, what level of destocking do you actually go down to. And destocking decisions in drought are extremely difficult. There's no getting around that. And one of the main reasons why it's so difficult is that there's no right or wrong. There's no correct strategy. Every strategy has its pros and cons, and they all have different impacts on the business. Now, some of those impacts are short term, but a lot of the impacts are actually do linger for a number of years. And it's those longer term impacts that are particularly difficult to foresee and quantify.

Stockplan is a program, and some of you may have heard of Stockplan. It's been around since the early 2000s. And it's a decision support tool that was developed by New South Wales DPI at the time. And it was developed to help producers and advisors explore and road test different destocking strategies and get a better sense of what are some of those shorter and longer term implications on breeding operations. Impacts in terms of flock numbers and herd and flock structure, but also the financial impacts, those cash flow impacts over time.

And so what I've done is I've used that program, which is called Stock Plan, to road test a few different strategies and I'll go through those results with you this morning.

So when you set up in Stock Plan a scenario, you need to model it on what we call a base flock or a base herd. And so what I've done is I've set up a self-replacing beef herd, selling feeder steers and heifers at around that 15 to 16 months of age. And I've based it on 100 breeders, so 100 cows joined annually. And in the program in that table, you can see all the assumptions largely around reproduction rates and death rates that I put into the model, which then sets up your numbers in terms of number of replacements and so on. So maximum cow age at joining was set at 9 years. An average calf weaning rate of 90%. Some death rates in there for adult cattle and weaner cattle. Age of heifers at first calving. So this is assuming that we are calving down at two years of age for those heifers.

The program also takes into account some costs. So I've factored in variable costs at $360 per cow and the overhead costs at $46,000 for that 100 cow breeding enterprise. And so what those overhead costs pick up are things like permanent labour, insurance rates, electricity, general repairs and maintenance and so on. And so that was calculated at about $23 a DSE for the overheads. And we also, in the program, you need to start with an opening balance in the bank. And so I put in $30,000 as a starting point.

Now, before I move on, the reason, I just want to point out the reason why we base it around 100 cows is that it enables people to then multiply up or down, depending on how many cows they are running. So it's a reference point. And so obviously, if you're running 300 breeders, then the financial impacts that we'll have a look at later on and the numbers, you would then scale up by a factor of three.

So the scenario that I've modelled in this program is assuming that we're going into drought in 2026 or dry conditions and we are weaning at a younger age than normal. So I've factored in a weaning age of an average weaning age of five to six months at 200 kilos live weight. And then at weaning, all of the steer calves are sold. And half of the heifer calves are also sold, and so half of those heifer calves have been kept for future replacements. At weaning, the 100 cow herd is then reduced. And so in the program, I've looked at three different levels of destocking, going from 100 breeders down to 80 versus down to 60 down to 40. Okay, so three different levels of destocking and then having a look at what are the impacts both cash flow and feed costs in the drought year, so in 26, but then also looking at how does the business recover in those years going forward.

So after the destocking in the program, we've assumed that the remaining cows are fed a full ration to achieve maintenance and those heifer calves are fed to achieve a growth rate, an average data gain there of 0.5 kilo per head per day, with the intention of getting some growth into those heifers to be able to then get them up to joining weight at 15 months of age. So we've got some destocking, different destocking levels there.

In terms of cost of them feeding in that drought year, in the stock plan program, you can quite quickly put together a feed budget. And so this table is a summary of that feed budget and just gives you a sense of what are the drought feeding costs that I've factored in to the model. So there's three different rows there. We have the 80 cow scenario plus the 23 heifers that we're keeping for future replacements, the 60 cow option and then down to 40 cows. There's some feeding rates there for both cows and heifers on a kilo per head per day basis. And this is looking at a full hand feeding scenario after weaning for a six month period. So those cows are effectively being fed from around three months pregnant right through to the point of calving. And those heifers are being fed at a starting weight of 200 kilos at weaning and then at the end of that six month feeding period being around that 275 kilo live weight sort of range.

So I've also got there, and there's some assumptions down there around cost of, in this case, I've used dried distillers grain and hay. And based on the prices there at the bottom of the table for both DDG and hay and a feedout cost, we can see that for that six month period, we have a feed bill ranging from almost $46,000 for the top row, which is the 80 cow scenario, down to almost $27,000 for the biggest destocking scenario, which is taking the 100 cows down to 40. So I've picked up those feeding costs and factored those in to the program.

The other thing that we need to do in the program, which is a bit fraught with danger, but we do need to make some best guesstimates around where livestock prices might go into the future. Now, we can get a pretty good handle on if we sell stock now or in the coming months, what sort of price we might get back for those stock based on current market values. But the big question then is really what, once the drought breaks, what are those stock likely to be worth down the track.

So this slide is from the MLA database and just looks at the feeder heifer and feeder steer prices indicators over the last 10 years and also the processor cow price. And I've just highlighted there the prices during that 2017 to 19 period, where prices actually held pretty firm, particularly for cattle in good condition. We can then see the big rise in the cattle market once the drought broke in early 2020. We can also see the big crash in the cattle market in that spring 23, when there was a lot of concern around developing El Nino and drying conditions. And then since then, we've had a, until quite recently, a very strong increase in cattle prices.

So that's a bit of a picture of the last 10 years. But the question then becomes, what can we expect in the next three to four, five years. Because when we make these stocking decisions now, a lot of the implications in terms of cash flow will then take place over the next three to five years.

So what I've done in the program is this then sets out this table what prices I've put in for feeder steers, feeder heifers and for cast for age slash dry units. And what I've, as you can see through that table, I've basically kept the prices in years 2027 and beyond consistent with roughly what we've seen in the last few months with where cattle have been sitting there. Prices have softened a bit, obviously in the last three to four weeks with drying conditions. But when reading through some of the commentary around where prices are expected to go, from ABARES and Naomi mentioned Simon Quilty, who's talking in a few weeks time up there, listening to some of the comments that are coming from Simon, ABARES and the like, even though we're seeing the market really respond to seasonal conditions right now, the message for longer term pricing sort of forecast seems to be quite positive going forward.

So that's the reason why in the program I've kept prices fairly consistent right through in terms of what might happen going forward for the next five years. And that positive price outlook is really largely been driven by a strong global demand for red meat coupled with reduced beef production in the US as they go through a herd rebuild.

So before we have a look at the implications of those different destocking decisions on cash flow and finances, the next couple of slides just looks at herd numbers.

So if we look at this part of the table now for the 80 cow scenario, what this does is it shows in the drought year, so if we say right out, say in 26, we reduced down to 80 breeders, we then have three different lines indicating how long does it actually take to breed back up to our 100 breeders.

So the first line is the standard rebuild. So what I mean by that is it's business as usual. In a 100 cow herd, you are bringing in about 16 heifers each year as replacements to maintain your breeding numbers. And so the standard rebuild is just business as usual post drought where you're bringing in the normal number of heifers as what you would normally do. And so by doing that, you can see there by 2027, you're back up to sort of 90, 89, 90 breeders joined. And then you slowly build back up to your 100 by 29. But you're pretty much back to 90% of capacity or numbers joined within 12 months.

If we look at the next line, this is where we've kept half of the heifer calves during the drought and we've sold half. The half that we keep, we're not just bringing 16 back in each year, but we're actually joining 80% of the heifers that are available in any given year to try and speed back up the number of cows joined and speed recovery up. So you can see there that doesn't really make that much of a difference. We're back up to 91 head there by 27 within 12 months.

And the last line is where we've kept, rather than selling half of those heifer calves, what if we actually keep them all and feed them a little bit to be able to get them up to joining weights and then select 80% of what's available. And if we do that, then we can actually get back up to our full 100 breeders joined within 12 months.

Righty-o, so what about the 60 cow scenario. So we're going a bit harder in the drought, we're destocking down to 60 head. Let's have a look at how long it takes to get back up to capacity. So again, standard rebuild, we're now taking a few more years out to 29 to get back up to 90% or better. If we overselect the heifers, so we join 80%, but we've sold half in the drought, we're getting back up there by sort of within two to three years. And if we keep all the heifer calves in the drought and join 80% of those until we get back up to full capacity, you can see there that we're back up with, by 27, we're up to 90 and then up to a full capacity within two years. So a bit more variation there depending on what you've done during the drought in terms of numbers and those heifer calves.

The final one now looks at the 40 cow scenario. So this is the biggest destock. And if we look at the standard rebuild after five years, we're still only sitting at 91 head joined. The next row down, which looks at over selecting, it helps a bit, but we're still taking four years to get back up to 90% or better. If we look at the final row where we've kept all those heifer calves in the drought, it cuts another 12 months off and we're now back there within sort of three years post drought.

So I think the key message here is if you're a self-replacing beef herd and you're looking at reducing your numbers by 50 to 60%, then keeping those heifer calves in the drought year is actually a really important consideration. They will actually add, obviously, a bit to your feeding costs, but they do become a valuable asset in terms of getting your breeding numbers back up again.

Righty-o, so that deals with the herd rebuild sort of numbers. What about cash flow. So the next couple of slides, they'll all look like this with a few different lines on the graph and some years across the bottom. So what we have up the side is what we call a cash balance at the end of the year. And it's a cumulative cash balance, so it's a year on year bank balance, if you like, before tax. And what it shows is, I'm sorry, the little legends falling off the bottom of the screen, but this is showing the cash flow for, if you like, if we destock to those different levels, but then just do a business as usual standard sort of rebuild.

So 2026 was our drought year and the yellow line is the biggest destocking. So that yellow line is going down to 40 head during the drought. And if you look at 2026, it's from a cash position, it sits in the best, it's the strongest point there at nearly 300,000. So it looks really quite good in a drought year. But if we then look further ahead down the track, we can see that the low breeding numbers and the low number of young cattle for sale means that business really struggles to generate income. And that's really picked up by the flatness of that yellow line, particularly from 2028 onwards. It really does stay quite flat just due to low numbers. And the overhead cost has been a real handbrake on the system.

If we go to the other end of the scale, the red line, that's the lightest destocking scenario. So that was just going from 100 head back to 80. And we can see that it starts the recovery in 2027. So this is assuming that in 2027, where we get a reasonable season again, and we start to come out of drought, we can see that the red line starts in a much more difficult financial position. But due to the strength of the livestock market, it bounces away much quicker. And if you just look at the steepness of the line and how it slingshots out, it's quite impressive. And it ends up being down the track, the strongest performer from 2030 onwards.

And so if we look at these strategies over a five year period, there's about $100,000 differential by 2031. And so that's just based on a 100 cow herd. So if you're running 300 breeders, you're then looking at a $300,000 differential.

Rightio. Sorry, was there a question that's come through at all or perhaps we'll just leave the questions to the end. Yeah, none coming through yet, Matt. But just a reminder to everyone, if you do have a question comes to mind, just pop it in the little chat box. It's the little icons across the top. It's the third from the left. Righty-o.

So this slide here is just showing those cash flow differences between those three different levels of destocking, but it's not looking at any additional ways that we might be able to come in and sort of try and speed things up. It's really, we've done some destocking during the drought year and then it's really become sort of that standard business as usual post drought. There's no interventional strategies being put into play yet to try and speed things up in terms of recovery.

So what we'll do now is I'll just go through a few slides to look at some of those recovery strategies that we've analysed. So the first one, I'll just focus on a breeding scenario step by step.

So initially we'll look at the 80, you know, the scenario we've gone down to 80 breeders and a few different strategies that we've analysed through impact or stock plan.

So now if we just focus on the 80 breeder scenario, that's our red line with our standard rebuild, which is a carryover from the previous graph. But what else might we look at. So the standard rebuild, like I said, is business as usual. The grey dotted line is where we've kept all the heifer calves and we've overselected. So we've over tried to retain as many of those heifers as possible to join, to speed things up. If you look at the grey dotted line compared to the red, it actually, we start off, it causes a bit more financial pain initially because we've kept more calves, so feeding costs have been higher, but also because we're retaining and joining 80% of what heifers are available, it also has an impact on our cash flow in the early part. But then you can see by 2028, that grey dotted line does start to overtake and ends up being in a stronger cash position.

The next grey dotted line, the solid grey dotted line there is the same thing, but where we've sold half of those heifer calves in the drought. So it doesn't cost us as much during the drought because we've got less heifer numbers that we have to feed and we've sold a few, but then over time it sort of performs in between the other two strategies in terms of finances.

The next line is the yellow line, and it's looking at, if you look at the legend, we're keeping half of those heifer calves in the drought. We're overselecting, but we're also buying in some PTICs in year one of recovery, which in this case is 27, and we've bought them in at $2,500 per breeding unit. So that costs us obviously some money in that 2027 year, but then we start to come away and getting in front by 2028 and beyond.

And then the last two lines are where we're retaining those heifers, but we're also trading some cattle. And the blue line is looking at bringing some trade cattle in to fill a relatively small DSE gap in this sense, with a trading margin of $200 per steer. And the trading margin on the green line is the same thing, but now looking at a $400 per steer trading margin. And if you look at where those lines all go, we can see a bit of variation in terms of cash flow and financial performance, but there isn't a huge amount of variation when we only reduce our breeding herd by say 20%. So and there ends up being about a $37,000 difference between top and bottom of those strategies by 2031.

So what I'll do now is I'll just show you with the next two slides will then step through exactly the same analysis, the same different strategies, but going down to 60 breeders and then going down to 40 breeders.

So if we look at the 60 breeder option, what we tend to see are those lines now starting to really spread out. And we're seeing a much bigger differential by year five. So the previous slide, we're looking at a $37,000 difference. If we're going to 60 breeders, same scenario, same pricing structure, but we're now out to $121,000 difference. And we're seeing interestingly that the yellow line, which is the buying in the PTICs in 2027, ends up being the strongest performer over the long term.

The next two were the trading options, the green and the blue line, the green line being the $400 on average trade margin on those steers, the blue line being the $200 margin, so they end up being the next best. And then from a, I guess, a breeding perspective, the grey dotted line, which is where we've kept all those heifer calves in the drought and over selected, that actually ends up being sort of comparable to the blue line over the long term.

So if you're not comfortable to buy in cows or do a trade, keeping all your heifer calves in the drought year is actually a pretty important strategy when you're starting to reduce your breeding numbers down to 40, 50% in a drought.

The next slide is now the 40 breeder scenario. So that's the biggest destock. And we just see the impacts just go to a whole new level. So we're now seeing a $218,000 differential between top and bottom by the end of the fifth year, which is almost double compared to the previous slide. Once again, the PTIC option comes out very strongly, and that's really a function of filling a big DSE hole quite quickly in year one, combined with strong livestock prices for both young stock and cull cows. When you buy a large portion of PTIC animals, you not only get dollars from the sale of the progeny and a quicker turnover, but you also increase the future incoming future years for having more cull cows available for sale.

Again, trading cattle, if you're open to that, comes out again very positive on the cash position. And again, that's because you're just filling a potentially a large DSE hole post drought and turning that spare grass into dollars. And the grey dotted line in this case, it still ends up being the better of the, I guess, the breed back strategies if you're breeding back just internally. But it does still struggle just through sheer lack of numbers when you've destocked by, in this case, 60% down to 40 breeders.

Matt, we do have a question just come through on that before you move on, if we can. Fiona's asked, how many PTIC cows have been brought into this scenario. Yeah, I'll have to go back and just double check. But I can, after I've finished, Naomi. I just don't have that at my fingertips, but I'll grab it for you. No worries. Thank you.

So what keeping the heifer calves during a drought, which is a grey dotted line, if you keep them all, it does accelerate your capacity to breed back to your 100 breeders. From a financial perspective, its impact is limited due to numbers. So if you reduce your breeding herd by 50% or more during a drought, you can retain all those heifer calves and use them. Sure, they're going to help, but it's also important to really consider doing something else rather than, in addition to that strategy.

So to summarise this, this graph now just pulls the three different scenarios in the 40 cows, down to 60 and 80. And I've just graphed the top 50% of the strategies that have been analysed and while there are a plethora of options available in dry times, we've only really covered a handful of strategies here. They all have their pros and cons and all impact cash flow in different ways.

If you're a breeder only and so you're not really comfortable in bringing in livestock from outside, I think it's really important to carefully think through what level of destocking that you're prepared to go down to, because your recovery options are going to be much more limited. And if you reduce your breeding numbers by say 50 to 60%, I think it's really important to think about, okay, am I prepared to go and buy in replacement females from outside, whether they're PTICs or heifers or older cows, but it does become a really important part of that recovery strategy if you are destocking to that extent. Otherwise it's a very slow recovery.

If you are comfortable with trading and buying in breeding stock, then obviously there's a lot more flexibility. You can more quickly fill that DSE hole and start turning that spare grass into dollars. However, as we know, buying in stock, whether it's trading stock or breeding stock, it does come with risk, both financial and disease risks, and those risks need to be weighed up.

So just to finish up, each drought is unique and needs to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. We can learn a lot from past experiences and that past experience, we can draw on some key messages out of that 17 to 19 period, and they are certainly valuable to us to draw on, but each drought is slightly different, and we do need to assess it on a case-by-case basis. I think it's really important to analyse all of the viable information and make the best decision that's for you and your business. There is no correct drought strategy. They all have their pros and cons. But at the end of the day, it's really important to look at a range of options and just weigh up what's the best fit for you. Because everyone's situation is going to be slightly different.

The last three bullet points there are really some key messages that came out of this modelling work and they're very consistent with what we found in that last 17 to 19 drought period. And the message there is that the greater the extent of the destocking during drought, the bigger the DSE hole that you need to try and fill post drought. The bigger the destock means the bigger the impact your decisions will have, especially in those first two to three years of recovery. And what we found is that even in a very expensive market, it still pays to buy in females if you can afford them. And I think that PTIC line in those examples really highlights that. So thanks, Naomi. I'll check that PTIC number question, but you're happy to answer any other questions that have come through.

Thanks, Matt. We haven't had any other questions come through as yet, but if there is any of you that would prefer to ask a question rather than type a question, you'll see two across from the chat box, there is a hand icon. You can do that to raise your hand and we can unmute you to ask that question. Matt, I did have one question for you. Because we looked into this modelling because it was a big question that came out of 18-19 for us was how do we rebuild, what impact is now going to have on our rebuild.

So I think it's good that we're able to get these figures in front of you. It is a lot to digest when you first look at this. So I encourage you all to sit with the recording when it comes and have another run through because it is a bit to get your head around and really process the information that Matt's presented, but it is very interesting and powerful. But my question for you, Matt, was just to see if there's anything that's been that's come out of the modelling that surprised you or was unexpected that might have kind of challenged your paradigm on a rebuild potentially.

I think it's probably more when we did this work last in the last drought, one of the things that, there's a couple of things that came out of it. One of them was historically we've tended to really focus on the older age cows and to naturally just sell those oldest age groups, which certainly has its merit, because if you target those older age groups, then the flow on effects are more short lived in terms of numbers. But the other thing that really popped out was rather than just purely targeting on the oldest age groups, the other way that you can do it is go also, you might target the oldest age groups as your first point, but also consider going across age groups.

And what I mean by that is you'll have the obvious ones that you can quite easily cull out for structural reasons or cows that you're not quite happy with. But the next tier then might be pre-testing. You've got dries, they're an obvious one that go. But also then you can look at when you preg test, identify your early and late calvers. And I think that's a really valuable tool because if you can separate your early calvers versus your late calvers in a drought year, those late calvers, if you need to pull the trigger and go, okay, I'm going to send a few more off, those late calvers I think are really that next sort of cab off the ranks, so to speak.

Because one of the risks, if you just focus on those older age groups, is you could actually be selling some still very, very fertile and productive older females out of the herd. So I think using fertility can be a very valuable tool in drought time. So that whatever cows you do keep are the ones that are the most fertile, the ones that are those early calvers, because they're the ones that are more likely to get back into calf under challenging conditions.

It's a beautiful segue into the next session on breeder herd management. Thanks, Matt. Oh, there you go. Thanks, Naomi.

We haven't had any other questions popped through, so we'll keep moving on. I'll just share mine with you all.

Okay, so I'm going to touch on breeder herd management. So getting the most from those animals that we do keep on farm and making sure that the animals that we do keep are productive for us, that they're not just surviving on the farm, that they are producing cash flow and being productive animals that we've retained.

Throughout this, I'm not going to assume any knowledge. I think in agriculture, we have a bad habit of assuming knowledge from people and we don't want to leave anyone behind. So if I'm saying something that you already know, I do apologise. But I do that in the interest of the group as a whole, because I don't want to leave anyone behind or scratching their head thinking, I'm not quite sure what you're talking about there.

As we go through this, we might try and use a couple of our little tools up the top, but I'll get to those as we go through.

So the first thing I wanted to touch on was based off the information Matt's put forward, when we were doing the workshops, we had a bit of a conversation around what was your call to action or what things are starting to mull around in your head about what you might do off the back of that information that's being presented or what you might already be doing.

Some of the options that were there were, that I just put together was it might be that you need to turn off younger stock to reduce your numbers and maintain those core breeders. You may look to do pregnancy scanning. You may want to keep more or less heifers in the interest of that rebuild later. Do you need to do a feed budget to actually get a full comprehension of what that feeding cost could be for you, or do you need to do a plan for how long you can feed.

So I'll just throw it out there quickly. If anyone has any thoughts on what's popped up for them, if you want to pop it in the chat, we can have a quick look through that. Otherwise we'll keep moving on. It is a good one to reflect on and just decide at the moment as we are making some pretty tough calls. What decisions am I making and is on the light of this information, is there something else that I could be doing or that I hadn't really considered.

I can't see any little typing dots, so we'll keep moving on because I want to give Sal plenty of time in a second.

So the first thing in terms of managing our cow herd is how do we identify our most productive breeders. And it's a really simple formula. So we need our cows to calve every 365 days, so one calf per cow per year. We need her to calve unassisted. We need her to wean a healthy calf, and we need her back in calf early. And that really feeds into what Matt was just saying around making sure that we've got those animals early.

So I just want to try, if you can use the hand raise button, can you give me an indication of who is currently pregnancy scanning. Let's see if I can see those hands popping up. We've got a couple coming through there, a number of hands popping up, which is really positive to see.

So for those of you that have popped your hand up, can you keep your hand up. So if you push the button again, it gives you the option to put your hand down. Can you keep your hand up if you do fetal age. So where you get your vet or your preg scanner to actually let you know how far in calf those animals are. There are a few hands up. That's fantastic.

The reason I ask this question on why pregnancy scanning and then fetal ageing is so important relates to this wheel that you can see here. So this is a calving wheel. And this is the key to a profitable herd. It's really very simple. 365 days in the year. The average gestation period for a cow is 283 days. And so in the year we have 283 days as you can see, 283 days gestating that calf. She calves. It takes cows on average 47 days to return to estrus, so to return to cycling to get back in calf, which leaves you roughly 35 days for her to get back in calf to keeping that cycle of one calf per cow per year.

The average cycle length for a cow is 21 days. So you're basically getting a cycle and a half in this period to get her back in calf before she starts to fall out and that year spreads out. So that means by having a tight calving, we're able to get more animals in here. We might be able to do things like select for short gestation length so we can move our calving window back a little bit to give us more time. But this is the real driver in our business and in productive cows.

And when we're looking at which animals we're going to keep and sell in a year, the animals that are able to do this consistently year on year are wean that healthy calf without giving us any grief are the animals that we want to keep in our herd.

So managing our heifers to set them up well for their first joining, to my mind, is the biggest opportunity that we have within the business, within the breeding herd. And the reason for that is the timing of the first calf sets the pattern for her through her lifetime. And I've got some research I'll show you in a second on that. It allows us to put fertility pressure on them with the short join over six weeks to make sure, as Matt said, we're really identifying those animals that are highly fertile. And then we need to look after them in our first lactation.

So only 60 to 70% of first calf cows or heifers, whichever you like to call them, will cycle within that 82 day period compared to 80 to 90% of mature females. So this first calf female is where we see a lot of animals start to fall out of the system. And we want to set them up well as heifers in that first joining to try and maximize the number of animals we're keeping in the herd. If you think of the herd rebuild graphs that Matt had put up, it's so important for us to be able to get as many animals in that herd as we can to help rebuild our cash flow and get that system really up and running again.

I've just seen a chat come up there. Matt's just answered your question in there, Fiona, for you with the number of cows that were brought in PTIC.

So we need to look after these heifers. We need to get them set up well for joining. So that's now heifers that you'll be joining for this year. We really need to be focusing on getting them ready to join. And we need to look after them after that first calf so that we can keep as many of them in the system as we can. I've included the little bred well fed well logo there. It's a program that we can run for you that covers a lot of this information and it really helps you dial in on some of this work.

So the effect of calving time on lifetime production, this is some research that was done back in 1974 and it's still really tracked. So what was done here, they had first calf heifers that were joined to have their first calf. So they followed the cows through and you can see cow one and cow two.

The first cow got in calf early in that joining window as a heifer. She calved within the second week of calving. And then she was able to, because if you think back to our wheel, where she calved early, she had the time available to her to get back in calf early. She continued to calve early in the joining period year on year throughout her life.

The second heifer, who was in the same cohort, joined later, so they had a 10 to 12 week joining window. So she still got in calf, she was kept in the herd because she was in calf, but she calved in week 8 compared to week 2. So her calving and rejoining period was shortened. And because we talked about those heifers have trouble getting back in calf, we lose them at that point. She still managed to get back in calf, but for her second calf as a three-year-old, she calved in week 10. And as you can see through her lifetime, she's constantly playing catch up now.

So while she stayed in the system, we've got her compared to this cow that we were able to pick up and detect early with our pregnancy scanning and early calving. What that equates to between those two animals is the equivalent of one and a half more calves in the life cycle of that animal, which really adds up. And I suspect that number's probably gone higher now with our improvements in gestation length and growth rates.

So while both these animals stay in the herd, cow one in this scenario really is the more productive animal in the herd. And these are the cows we want to identify and keep in the system. And so if we are at a point where we're selecting based on gestation length, for example, if we choose a herd of animals that are fitting this cow one early calving window versus the back end of cow two with late in the calving window, we can pick up productivity that way.

So the next step is how do we make the most of the animals that we keep and that we purchase. I've put this little graph in here because I think this is a nice representation. You hear it a lot in agriculture and in other areas, but if you don't know where you're going, it doesn't matter what road you take.

So when we're looking at our herds now, we really need to think about what kind of animal have we got. Are they fit for farm and fit for our purpose. And are they able to do the job for us. And the type of animal we end up with, so the phenotype or physical traits that we end up with in our cattle, is a combination of the genes that we select for and the environmental conditions that they're exposed to, the non-genetic factors.

And we can manage a lot of things in those two areas to give us an animal that's going to do the job for us on farm. The key to knowing which direction you need to go is to know what market you're targeting and whether you're targeting to a feeder market, whether you're trading or you're just selling direct over the hooks. Knowing what the grid specs are or the market specs are so that you can work to that.

Having a written herd breeding objective really helps with this. The reason we say to have a written herd breeding objective is because it takes it out of your head and it gives you something to refer back to. And quite often it's not just you making decisions in your business. So if you have it written down, everyone can be on the same page.

And if you're working with an agent to buy your bulls, if you're doing an AI program and you're working with your AI tech, it makes it easier for you to actually communicate what that breeding objective is. And it doesn't need to be complicated. It could be something that's as simple as one to two sentences where you're able to note your priority breeding traits. And that could be that you're getting every cow is calving every year. You might want to shorten your gestation length and turn off stock heavier and younger. That could be your breeding objective for your herd.

You might also then build in three or four secondary breeding traits. So it might be that I've noticed I'm getting a bit lean, I've really been pushing growth and now I'm getting a bit lean, so I want to improve my fat cover. You might want to decide you may have some animals coming in that are getting a bit cranky, so you might put a bit more selection on culling for temperament or you might be happy with your carcass traits, but you want to maintain that.

But really critically look at your herd and work out what am I producing for and how can I refine that to make them suit what I need as best as I can.

So a key, there's a number of tools that are available to us. The key thing I want to say on this is don't just look at data and don't just look at the animals. I think when we start to talk about EBVs and data, there's still a lot of an attitude of, oh, if you look at the data, that's all you look at and you don't consider anything else. And that's really not the best way to handle it.

I love to use the analogy that we don't just have a hammer in the toolbox. You're not going to use a hammer to fix anything. You have a whole suite of tools. And it's exactly the same with breeding our cattle. We have a suite of tools available for us to use and we get the best result when we use the right tool for the job.

So some of the ways that you can help to select either the animals you're keeping or the animals that you're buying in, particularly coming into bull season now, is utilising breeding value. So knowing your herd breeding objective and what you want from your animals, understanding the specifications of the market or the grid that you're producing for, and utilising EBVs, estimated breeding values, and EPDs, estimated progeny differences.

You'll see these two acronyms used. Estimated breeding values relate to the breeding value of that animal and its progeny. The estimated progeny differences are quite often used in overseas analysis that are done, and that is the estimated result you would get from the progeny of that animal. So they're not the same. So just be aware of that if you're looking at them, whether you're looking at an EBV for the animal or an EPD, which relates directly to its progeny.

The next thing we have is raw measurements. I've just listed a few in here. So semen analysis, for example, making sure your animals are semen tested before you get them. And also testing your bulls each year before joining. If you're going to have an issue with the semen quality, you don't want to be picking that up at preg testing because by that point it's far too late.

So making sure that you're prioritising semen analysis and checking your bulls each year is important. When you're looking at animals to purchase, you might be looking at scan data and weights that's provided. We'll talk a little bit more on that in a moment. I do caution looking at raw data versus EBVs. The benefit of EBVs is it allows you to compare animals across herds, whereas scan data you really can only look at that data for that cohort of animals as they are on the day.

And also health history relating to vaccinations you may need. This could relate to pestivirus, tick vaccinations, a whole suite of health history things that you need to consider with your animals so that you don't have problems when you get them on farm.

Visual assessment. As we said with the toolbox, visual assessment is equally as important as utilising genetic information and breeding values. We need these animals to be structurally sound. Temperament may be important for you. We know that temperament does relate to productivity. You may be looking for a polled animal. Some people like to keep a horn gene in. Coat type if you're up north, looking for a slick coat.

So there's a number of things that we can be looking at to help us select our animals. The key is that we need to make sure that is relating to the breeding objective and knowing what we need.

So the next part of this, how do we maximise genetic investment in the animals that we're purchasing. I like to treat purchasing bulls as if you're hiring a new employee, because all you're buying with a bull is a genetic delivery device. And so treat it as if you're hiring a new recruit on the farm. So if you have your written herd breeding objective, that becomes your job description for that animal. What do you need from your new bull to help improve or maintain the key traits important in your herd. And your priority traits become your essential criteria and then you have your desirables.

If at any point you feel like you would like some help to refine what this looks like or to start selecting animals and really get your finger on the pulse with this, please reach out. We're able to help you with this. Both myself and Liam Baker, who's a livestock officer, are very keen on this area. So we're here if you need a hand. But let's treat them as a recruit and we're going to step through the next couple of bits as if we're hiring an employee as we're going through our bull buying.

So the first thing, shortlist our candidates. So we get all the catalogues arrive in the mail. It can get a little bit overwhelming and then they might end up sitting on the bench for a bit and we don't do too much with them until we get to the sale.

Use your catalogues to shortlist against your essential criteria. So go through and work out which bulls actually are going to do the job for you based on the information that's provided with the EBVs and any additional information the herd provides. And then refine it against your desired criteria. So if in a catalogue of 100, you might get 30 bulls that meet your essential criteria, you can further refine that based on your desired criteria.

Breed indexes can be helpful. So indexes are produced by your breed, the breed society for the bulls that you might be looking at. And they're done for particular markets. So you might have a domestic maternal or domestic terminal market. And these are produced based on the weighting of different traits that go into building an animal that fits that market. They can be very helpful if you've got a particular index that you're selecting for.

But I just caution with that, when you do shortlist on an index, make sure you go and actually review the EBVs of that animal against the data that you need, because every animal is going to get to their dollar value that's on that index in a different way. And an animal, while it may have an impressive index for what you're looking for, the actual EBVs of that particular animal may not be exactly what you're looking for. So just make sure you do actually take that next step to review if you're using indexes.

In terms of shortlisting your candidates, a good relationship with your bull breeder goes a long way because it gives you the chance to also ask questions around the maternal traits of those animals through those maternal lines. And the other thing I want to say there too, there's plenty of animals on the market. So if you have been buying from the same person for a long time or a select few, and they don't have what you need this year, there's plenty of other animals on the market, so take the time to have a look at what's around and get to know those other breeders and really find the breeders that are forthcoming with information that you ask of them and are happy for you to have a further look at the animal and really delve into what's going to suit your program.

Just wanted to run through this now in terms of shortlisting your candidates, because you might be thinking that's all well and good, but how do I actually do that. I've just pulled an EBV table out of Breedplan and you'll likely see something similar to this presented in catalogues. Each stud will present the data in their own way, but this is straight from Breedplan.

So you'll see across the top, you'll have all the traits listed along here that are available for that animal, so gestation length, birth weight, 200 day, 400 day, et cetera. The EBV line here, that's the EBV that relates to that particular animal. You'll see another EBV line further down and that is the breed average EBVs. So this one up here is for the animal you're looking at. The line down the bottom is for the average of the breed.

The line accuracy relates to if you had 100 animals joined to this bull, this tells you roughly where those animals would sit. So for gestation length, if we joined 100 animals to this bull for gestation length, we could anticipate that 67% would have a minus 1.4 days of gestation length and the other animals would either go above or below that. Where you have a higher accuracy, there's less movement around the EBV. So you'll still get animals hitting that target, but if you have an animal that's say 30% accuracy, the deviation bars above and below that EBV will be bigger than one that's at 90%. Hopefully that makes sense how I've described that.

And the percentile line that you'll see here relates to the animal's position against the breed average. So this bull that we're looking at here sits in the top 10% of this breed for gestation length, and if you look at milk, but in the bottom 90% of the breed for milk. So that's how those two work there.

So the way that we can utilise this information is if we have our, I've just done a bit of an example here for myself. If we have a self-replacing herd that's producing feeder cattle and is hoping to become a supplier of choice for their feedlot, the key things they're looking to improve in their herd is they want to shorten gestation length, they would like to turn them off faster, and they've received some feedback from the feedlot that they need to lift their MSA score because they're not quite high enough in their MSA.

So for this person, what they'd be looking for is they're going to select their next round of bulls. So the first thing they want to shorten up their gestation length and this is pretty important for them and they want to put a fair bit of pressure on this. So they might be looking for bulls that are quite high in the breed for their short gestation length. They're wanting to turn them off faster and in this instance they're quite happy with the turn off weights they've got, they just want to see a bit of improvement. So he's in the top 35% here, they might be happy with that. They don't need a bull that's really at the top of the breed for this, they just want to improve on what they've got at the moment.

And they need to lift their MSA score. A couple of the ways you can do that is to increase your IMF and also reduce your ossification score, which relates to the age of the animal. So here if we're able to turn them off quicker and younger and we've got above breed average for IMF, they're two things that we can utilise to help lift the MSA score for that animal. So that's how they might go about selecting animals as they're looking at the catalogue to actually shortlist which bulls could do that specific job for them.

If you're looking at the figures and thinking that's a bit overwhelming and there's too many numbers and you kind of just want to go back out in the paddock and not think about it too much, this is my favourite little button just up the top here where you can see the little graph button. When you click on that, it brings up this table, which is a percentile bands for the animals. And this is just the EBV data that's translated into graph form. So where you see the line down the middle here, that's 50%. That's breed average. So if you think of a graph that's going like this with your peak, that's 50%. Along the side here you can see gestation length, shorter, lighter, heavier, and it's at 0%. So these are the animals that are in the top of the breed for those traits. And on the other end is the animals that are in the bottom of the breed for those traits.

So if you had an animal leaning this way, they'd be longer gestation length, heavier birth weight, lighter 200 day weight. This can be a really helpful way to get a quick snapshot of animals, particularly as you've really refined what you're looking for, and it is a lot nicer way to look at it.

Looking at this though, I think there is a bit of propensity from people to want to select animals that sit all in this area thinking that that's what I need, I just need everything to be better. You don't necessarily want or need to have everything on this side of the graph. So a great example for this is milk. Out here in Narrabri, we don't want animals that are sitting right up the top at the top of the breed for milk because we don't have the pasture in front of them to support that kind of milk production. So we may just want animals that are sitting at breed average. Another one is fats. If you're getting feedback that your animals are too fat and you need to slim your fats down, you don't want an animal selectable that's sitting right up at the top here for fats, because that's not going to do the job for you. Maybe you do want them a little bit leaner.

So just be conscious of the fact that you don't need to have everything better. This is why it's important to, as Matt said earlier, everything is individual, really tailoring what you need for your herd to get you where you want to be.

We'll go through here now. So we've had our catalogues, we know our criteria, we've shortlisted them. Now the interview and remuneration, what they're going to get paid and what we're going to spend is sale day. So we want to get to the sale, remember our catalogue. You don't want to do all this hard work and leave your catalogue sitting on the bench at home, so make sure you've got your catalogue in hand.

This is where we do the visual assessment portion. If you think back to where we talked about what bulls are available, we've utilised our EBVs now and selected based on the breeding information provided. Now we need to do the visual assessment to make sure these animals are structurally sound, that we're happy with the way they're walking, to make sure that they have the temperament that we like. All those little traits that I'm a big advocate for, you need to have animals that you like the look of and there's a particular type of animal that you know will suit your operation. This is your chance to further refine your list. And this is where you can set your budget.

So you prioritise your animals you want to purchase at the sale, set your budget and stick to it. Don't get caught up in the excitement of the auction because there will be more cattle on offer that will do the job for you.

I had put a little document in there which goes to a DPI structural soundness, which has some really good information and diagrams for those that might be wanting more information on structure. I won't go into that now just in the interest of time, but we'll attach that link when we send out the recording for you.

So induction, I think this is a key point that can get missed sometimes. We don't want to go to all the effort of finding the animals we need, getting them for the price we want, getting them home and then having a breakdown or having issues with them. So key things here, look after your bulls when they arrive and plan for longevity. If they're arriving by themselves, make sure you've got other stock in the yards waiting for them so that they're not sitting in there by themselves.

Chances are they could be a little bit stirred up or a little bit upset when they arrive home, no matter how quiet they are, just from the transport and different people handling them, being on trucks and the sale and all those things. So have someone there for company for them. Give them feed and water on arrival to help them settle in. And quarantine for a period where you can and vaccinate to bring them in line with your herd health.

Most studs will be able to tell you or will have it printed in their catalogue what vaccinations and health treatments they've had. So review that and if there's anything you do standard in your herd that has not been done to these animals, make sure that you do that while they're in that quarantine period.

Conscious of your mating rates, especially for yearling bulls. We want to make sure that we're not over joining these animals and causing potential breakdowns from doing that. Assess the pros and cons of multi-sire versus single sire mating. That's a webinar in itself, so that's all I'll say on that one. But just be conscious of if you've done multi-sire joining or you've done single-sire joining, just review what you're doing, how you're doing it, why you're doing it. You might keep doing it that way, but just reflect and see if there is a better way to be doing your joining to reduce bull breakdown for better results.

And don't forget them in the paddock. An issue we see, particularly in dry times like these, is where we're really good at managing those cows through the dry and making sure they've got body condition scoring for joining. And then it comes time to do the bulls six weeks out and we think, they're looking a bit run down, I've sort of forgotten about them, I'll chuck a bit of hay out.

The process of spermatogenesis, so sperm production, takes 64 to 74 days for bulls. So if you're getting to them six weeks out and thinking I'll just give them a bit of feed, they probably need a bit of a pick me up, you're already too late. You've already missed a window in your joining period for them to have functional sperm that can do the job. So just be conscious as we're approaching joining again to make sure that you are looking after your bulls in the same way you're looking after your females.

The last thing I wanted to touch on, which relates to a herd rebuilding project we've done with UNE in the Southern Queensland and Northern New South Wales Innovation Hub, is just some technologies that we've, through that project, we've evaluated on commercial properties in the northwest and northern tablelands. I've left this slide in because these are also technologies that can be valuable for you to use in dry times as well. We tested them in the context of rebuild, but you can utilise them now.

So the first is commercial genomics. And that's where you're able to utilise a DNA sample taken with a tissue sampling unit from the animal's ear, and you send that away for analysis and get EBVs for those animals that you test. So you can look at the commercial animals with the same scope that you have your bulls in terms of their genetic merit and phenotypic potential for particular traits.

Commercial genomics has got more and more uptake at the moment. There's a lot of providers that are available. It can be expensive, but if you are at the point where you've culled your animals that aren't in calf, you've culled your animals that are late in calf, you've got a really nice cohort of heifers and you're not quite sure which ones to select, that could potentially be an option to give you some more information, another tool in your toolbox to be able to work out what you're going to select and which ones to keep.

The next is fixed time artificial insemination. So some of you are probably familiar with artificial insemination or may have done programs in the past. The difference with fixed time AI is that you're synchronising the estrus of the animals, so it's less labour intensive and you're not having to go through the process of heat detection. So all the animals in the program get AI’d in the same window. And the other part of this program that we've used is to evaluate the use of sexed female and male semen. So that's where semen's actually sorted into XY and XX chromosomes to give you all bull calves or heifer calves.

Some of the key findings that we came from that project, which I wanted to touch on that could be relevant for you now as you're getting set up for a spring joining as well, we found that the heifers that were joined to the sexed female semen were really valuable for herd rebuild. If we're doing our breeding programs well, they should be getting better each year and with each generation. And so those heifer calves are the ones that we want to keep in our herd because they should be our highest genetic merit animals in the herd. And so by AI-ing them to a sexed female to have a heifer calf, we can then accelerate the rebuild of the herd with high genetic value animals. If you think Matt was talking about overselecting for heifers, let's make those really high quality heifers and get more of them to select and rebuild faster.

This program also found that the heifer calves that had a heifer calf at foot, more of those animals were able to get back in calf because the growth pattern of the heifer better matched the growth needed in that first calf heifer compared to the ones that had a bull calf that had a higher growth rate and was taking more from her as a first calf heifer. So that was another interesting finding.

In this program, one of the things that we found that could work well was if you're AI-ing your heifers with sexed female semen, you could look to AI your cows with sexed male semen for your cash flow, so to pull off those big thumping steers from those cows that can handle it.

So we found there's more variation within herds and between herds in terms of the animals when they were tested for genomics, so the EBVs for those animals, which really told us that for these herds that are actively selecting for particular traits and are really clear on their breeding objective, those animals that they were producing with the heifers weren't being retained in the herd. So that's been a real learning for them to make sure the animals they're selecting for are actually being kept.

And sorry, I've just touched on that there too. So genetic selection is one part of the puzzle, but genetic retention is the other. So making sure we are keeping those animals in that we're actively selecting for.

That's it for me now. I'll just check if there's been any questions come through. It's quite a lot thrown at you. Fiona's got her hand down. Did you have a question? Nope.

If there's no questions, I'll pass over to Sally to cover off on her nutrition and feeding, which will be very valuable for you all. Over to yourself. Thanks.

Thanks, Nai. I’ll just get my slide going, hopefully. Can you all see that, did it come up, and can you all hear me. Yep, all good, Sal. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Hi everybody. Glad to be here, but also sorry at the same time. I’m going to do my best to just give you some, I’ve sort of picked the eyes out of what I think I know nutrition wise, mostly to give you some food for thought to help you sit down and make better decisions going forward. It’s a tough season and a tough climate. So feeding the breeder cow today, why. Why we care.

If we think back to Naomi’s wheel, her contribution to our farm, to our back pocket is the progeny that she has. We need her to have a calf every year. The nick she’s in really does make a difference to her ability to do that.

So there’s some graphs that’s been done by a couple of different organisations. The percentage of cows in heat, so that’s just cycling, after calving is really correlated to their fat score. So you can see our cows in really good nick at a four to a six, 90 days after calving, 100% of them have been cycling. If we compare that to some of our leaner cows, like our fat score one and two, 50 days we’ve only got 30% of the mob, 70 days we’ll get 50% of the mob, and 90 days out we’ve only got just over half of them cycling.

The same thing was found with the influence of feed in front of them. You can see in the other graph, I hope it’s big enough on your screen, the green line is a good level of feed and the blue line is a poor level of feed. Hopefully we’ve got a green line in front of us, but if we don’t, you know that cow that’s in that, even that fat score three, if she’s got good feed in front of her, they cycle really quickly. If they don’t, then their time to start cycling again is really slow. And that’s just nature’s way of preserving life. But it makes it really hard for us to make sure that we’re remaining profitable and productive.

So not advocating for massive big fat cows. There’s no maths in that, but they do need to be in good enough nick to get in calf, have a calf and do an okay job of that calf every year.

Our nutrients required to do that, sort of a bit of a pyramid, hierarchy of needs. It’s taken the American food, health, I don’t know, 20 something years to turn those up the other way to work from the most important down. Water. Water’s the one that actually has me really nervous this time round. We’ve rolled into this dry patch with very little groundwater. I don’t know whether that’s just because we haven’t had those heavy showers or whether everyone’s managing their ground cover really well and we just haven’t had the runoff. But water really frightens me. It doesn’t matter what food we have in front of our animals. If the water’s not good enough in terms of quantity, it’s not enough there, or the quality is not good enough so they’re not drinking enough, our production will be really impacted.

So I guess that’s the first item to tick. I am not a big advocate of carting water. There’s a lot of data that suggests that if an animal gets to the trough and there’s not enough water there, they potentially just skip their drink that day. So water is really important. I think we underestimate it.

We then move on to energy. Energy is basically what makes us fat or skinny. So it’s my sort of next thing to tick off. Protein is important. All of these things are equally important. The absence of one will crush the system. But I think maybe the northern lick industry’s done a really good job of selling protein. So people will often ring me up and they go, oh, I’ve got wheat and it’s so much percentage of protein. I’m like, that’s awesome, I actually don’t care. What I need to know is how much energy is in that feed because that’s what will determine how much bang for our buck we’ll get out of it.

We then move on to fibre. In the northwest New South Wales where I am, we will generally run out of quality in our feed before we run out of quantity. Fibre has a real piece to play in that, and I’ll explain that a little bit more on a few slides. Our minerals and then our vitamins, I’ll touch on at the end.

So our energy requirements. In Australia we use the terminology megajoules of metabolisable energy per kilo of dry matter. We always work absent of water. So every feed will contain an element of moisture to it. You know, hay sort of needs to be 85% dry matter or better, otherwise it tends to catch on fire. Our pastures will range from anything as low as 10, 15% dry matter when the plant is young, lush and growing up to around sort of 80s, high 80s, once it’s dry and senesced off.

Be really mindful if you’re Googling. The Americans, some stuff is in megajoules. Other stuff’s in megacalories. It’s about half, so to convert megacalories to megajoules, it’s a bit better than double. So just be really mindful of the difference in the metric there.

And then we’ll look at either maintenance, so neither gaining nor losing weight, and there’s a calculation you can use for that. So a 500 kilo cow dry, so not pregnant, not lactating, she needs about 55 megajoules of energy a day. There’s obviously variation based on genetics and the weather and all those things, but that’s a bit of a guide. They will hit peak requirement at peak lactation and then we’ll generally be targeting at least 100 megajoules. There’s plenty of people staring down the barrel of that at the moment.

And I suppose the main thing here is when we talk about feeding for maintenance, you’ll hear people say start feeding early. You need to start feeding early. And that’s because the energy that the animal gets from stripping a kilo off her back, it’s not at parity with the energy she needs to eat to put that back on. So when we look at if we let them slip, if we don’t feed for maintenance, we let them slip, all of a sudden we need to feed a ration that’s maintenance plus. That’s a lot more expensive, a lot harder to come up with.

Sourcing our energy. Make sure you know what’s in the ingredients you’re looking at. So there’s a few different forms of energy. We’ve got our starch really present in our cereal grains, carbohydrates, our sugars and our fats and our oils. So fats and oils really nutrient dense, but there is a limit to how much the rumen can handle of those things.

Lots of talk about faba beans, great product. Like if you look at the graph, you’ve got non-starch polysaccharides, they don’t produce lactate, so there’s not really an acidosis risk to those. Starch is our king of acidosis. So if you do come across some affordable pulses, by all means they’re a great feed, but do treat them like wheat when you feed them out. They’ll need introduction and those sorts of things.

Onto our protein piece. Protein is generally listed as a percentage, so it’s a percentage of crude protein. It’s two types of protein. We have non-protein nitrogen, ruminants are cool in that we can use things like urea to feed the bugs. The bugs build up to decent numbers, they flow through the rest of the digestive system and provide a protein source for the animal. And then we’ve got our true proteins, our meals, pulses, cottonseed, things like that.

Protein is either rumen degradable or it bypasses. Bypass I’m a lot more concerned about when I’m doing young stock. For cows at the moment I’m just worried about getting enough rumen digestible protein into them.

I stole this graph from Jeff Duddy, but it’s the minimum energy and protein requirements for sheep and cattle. Survival is losing weight and just surviving. There’ll be no production benefits to that. Lactation and late pregnancy, we need at least 12% crude protein and a diet that’s 9 to 10 megajoules per kilo dry matter. For maintenance, I work on a bare bones minimum of a diet that’s at least 8 megajoules per kilo and 8 to 10% crude protein.

This is my fibre piece. Fibre has the exact opposite effect in a ruminant to it does for something like us. The more fibre in their diet, the slower the rate of passage. So you’ll see cows graze dry standing feed until they’re really quite full and then sit and chew cud to break it down. If there’s not a lot of protein going on, there’s not a lot of rumen activity, and intake is limited.

On that paddock feed availability, if the feed is too short or too sparse, they’ll only take so many bites in a day before they give up. If we’re forcing them to forage, that takes energy. The energy they gain might not make up for what they’ve used to get it.

There is some upside. A protein supplement will increase pasture intake of dry pasture. The research suggests 20 to 30%. But it’s not going to turn poor feed into high quality feed.

If a cow needs 100 megajoules and is only getting around 60 from dry feed, you’ve got a deficit. Supplements like molasses mixes help, but sometimes higher energy feeds like cottonseed give better returns for the cost.

Early weaning. That lactation is really costly in terms of energy. Milk is a great product, but it comes at a huge nutritional cost. Early weaning can reduce feed demand significantly.

When sourcing feed, if you can get a feed test, do it. Because what looks like good hay can range widely in energy value. Work on cost per tonne dry matter, cost per megajoule, and cost per protein.

There’s a good app, the NSW DPI Drought and Supplementary Feed Calculator. It lets you compare feeds and work out value.

Minerals. If you’re deficient, supplementing pays. If not, you’re wasting money. The key ones I focus on are calcium and sodium.

Vitamin A is another one. Stored in the liver, but once depleted it’s hard to replace. So every few months without green feed, a vitamin A, D and E injection is worthwhile.

Early weaning, just to touch on it, under 100 kilos is doable but very management intensive. Over 100 to 120 kilos is easier, over 150 kilos it’s fairly straightforward.

If you’re feeding young stock, diets need to be energy dense, transitions gradual, and avoid things like high urea early on. Make sure infrastructure suits their size and maintain hygiene.

There was a question about confinement feeding. There’s a good webinar called the A-Z of confinement feeding. It covers everything. Key things are water quality, space, hygiene, and consistent feeding.

Regularity of feeding matters. The rumen needs consistency. Daily or every second day feeding is best. Stretching to three days gets risky.

One final note, if you’re on full feeding, make sure your bulls are on the same ration before joining. We saw issues where bulls weren’t adapted and developed acidosis.

That’s me. And we are a little over time, but maybe there’s time for questions.

Thanks, Sal. We haven’t had any questions come through yet, but Emma has dropped the confinement feeding webinars in the chat.

One question has just come through. Is there a benefit between a block or a loose lick. Yeah. The way to weigh it up is to go okay, this costs me this much a kilo, and for my kilo I get this much protein or energy. Personally, I prefer loose licks, they’re usually more cost effective and more flexible. Blocks often include binding ingredients that don’t add nutritional value.

We don’t have any more questions there at the moment. Our contact details are on the slide there if you’d like to jot those down. It’s been a lot of information thrown at you and we have gone a bit over time, but hopefully you can find what you were after within the webinars. If not, please reach out to us. We’re more than happy to help, and if we can’t, we’ll put you in touch with someone who can.

Thank you for your attendance. Thank you to Sal and Matt as well for your time today. And hopefully all goes well. Thanks, guys.

Assess your pasture

As your drought risk increases, inspect all of your paddocks to determine how much feed you have and assess pasture quality.

An essential part of your farm's drought management plan should include developing a feed budget.

Think about:

  • If it stays dry for the next month, two months, three months, what will the quality and quantity be like?
  • How much feed do you need for the stock you are carrying?
  • What stage are your crops at?
  • Will they finish or can you graze them?
  • What is the groundcover percentage – are there bare patches showing?

Groundcover is easily assessed and is a useful drought management tool. High levels of groundcover can help slow down rain that falls and ensure it is better captured, with more rain infiltrating the soil profile. If there are reasonable levels of leaf cover remaining, the pasture will recover much faster when rain does fall.

Sheep in a drought affected paddock

Check your soil moisture profile

There are a range of tools to monitor your soil moisture profile. While you are checking pastures, dig a few holes and assess soil moisture levels. Is there still moisture in the root zone? Match what you find here to the weather forecasts and feed requirements in the months ahead should drought conditions continue.

Assess livestock condition

Check the condition score of your livestock. If you have lactating animals, consider early weaning to reduce the energy demand on breeding stock. Watch young heifers, ewes and breeders in drought conditions. They are prone to stripping condition which can result in poor re-joining rates.

Heifers with their first calf should not fall below Fat score 2 (minimum 3mm fat at P8 site). If you provide calves, 2-5 months-old, with a high quality supplementary diet, they will wean satisfactorily. It is more efficient to wean calves early and feed them separately than trying to supplement the lactating cow/calf unit. This also applies for sheep and other classes of livestock.

Assess your stock water status

Managing your on-farm water sources is an essential part of your drought management strategy.

  • How much water do you have stored on farm?
  • How many litres a day will your stock drink?
  • What is the quality of your stored water?
  • Could stock accessing water get stuck in mud?
  • Can you improve water access and availability overall should it remain dry?

Calculate your daily water requirements, and utilise feed in paddocks with poor water supplies first. For more advice read our guide to stock water requirements in drought.

Cattle in a dam during drought

Consider supplementary feed options

Do a stocktake on your supplementary feed. Think about:

  • how feed much you have
  • the quality of the feed
  • will it maintain stock and, if so, how many?
  • can it fatten and finish stock?

For advice on the minimum weight of feed per day to maintain stock condition, read our drought feeding livestock guide.

Energy should be the main focus of supplementary feeding. Then give consideration to protein, fibre and the vitamin/ mineral components. Do your sums as feed and transport costs vary widely. For example, cereal grain (energy source) prices delivered on-farm may vary by over $50 per tonne. Complete mixes from local feed mills while simpler to feed, can attract further premiums. Remember, grain quality can vary and grain prices can rise quickly if supply tightens during extended drought periods.

You can source hay and silage from less drought-affected areas which may continue to have an adequate supply of pasture. Conditions at the time will normally dictate the price. The main word of caution is to look for a feed quality test to determine value for money. Do not forget to get a commodity vendor declaration with any stock feed purchased. When purchasing feed in bulk, give consideration to available resources to unload and/or store.

For more advice on the best feed options during drought, see our guide to balancing nutrition and cost.

Plan and prioritise a livestock selling order

You should sell or agist livestock before they are suffering from poor nutrition. Offload unproductive stock, for example, cows that have pregnancy tested not in calf, or ewes that have scanned empty. Preserve core breeding flock/herd to keep genetics for long term benefit after the drought has broken.

Pregnancy testing breeders is good drought management. Feeding and managing unproductive livestock through drought can apply extra pressure. It’s well worth knowing what animals are most productive, so if you have to offload, you can make an informed decision. If lack of feed is likely to be an immediate issue, strongly consider selling any fat or finished stock to ease feed and water demand on the farm.

Your drought plan should include a selling order for your stock taking current market conditions into consideration. Calculate whether it’s worth selling livestock classes at current weights and prices, or to supplement and feed on to target a specific market. Keeping in mind livestock prices may fall for drought affected stock and feed prices may rise if dry seasonal conditions persist. Those with growing stock experiencing deteriorating feed quality and quantity should consider selling anything marketable. Also consider an order of sale at certain trigger points before the season ‘forces’ a sale, often at a time when many others are in the same situation.

Know your financial position

Inform yourself and/or your management team on your cash position and your farm equity. Run some partial budgets at least to determine likely outcomes of holding and feeding stock vs selling in the current market. Rural Financial Counsellors, your accountant or farm consultant can assist with drought budgeting and finance requirements. Financial support or household payments may also be available in your area so ask questions and seek planning advice.

Prepare stock containment areas

When ground cover becomes limiting, you should restrict your stock to very small areas or stock containment areas. This will help to minimise pasture damage and erosion.

A good drought strategy includes planning ahead for the infrastructure needed for confinement feeding.

Feeding stock in restricted areas also limits possible weed contamination from purchased fodder. It also maximises feed use efficiency by minimising travel distances to feed and water because stock are not walking off energy.

To aid your livestock management, find out how to build and use stock containment areas.

Monitor animal health

Confining stock to manage drought conditions can increase the prevalence of contagious diseases. This is due to a higher stocking density and more frequent contact at feeding and watering points. Watch for health conditions including pinkeye, pneumonia, and parasites.

Some red flags are the livestock standing with their heads lowered to the ground, their backbone is prominent, or their ribs are pointy to touch. It’s important to keep a close eye on this so you can transport them before they are too weak.

Ensure you protect your stock from pulpy kidney/enterotoxaemia before concentrate feeding commences. You can achieve this by administering a 5-in-1 or 6-in-1 vaccine to sheep and a 5-in-1 or 7-in-1 vaccine to cattle.

Look after your own wellbeing

We know the toll that drought can take on your own wellbeing. There are a number of mental health services available to landholders. Taking care of yourself is the first step in taking care of your family and your farm. 

Contact Local Land Services NSW

We welcome your enquiries, feedback and comments.  Contact our team

Find your nearest LLS office

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Phone:1300 795 299
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