Managing for dry times

Planning for dry times before they happen is extremely important so you are prepared to make good strategic and timely decisions. Making informed decisions and taking timely action for dry times helps protect your farm’s productivity, reduces the impacts of dry weather and ensures a faster recovery from dry seasons.

Key tips for a drought management plan:

• Write up the plan and act on trigger points
• Prepare budgets for livestock feeding and selling options
• Prepare budgets for various pasture and fodder crop management and end use strategies
• Prepare cash flow budgets for 2-3 years
• Maintain groundcover to protect your soils
• Take care of yourself and your family – you and your family are your most important assets

Some resources to complement your plan are below:

• A drought feeding and cost of supplement calculator can be found here: Drought and Supplementary Feed Calculator (nsw.gov.au)
• The following resource allows you to calculate a standard reference weight for your ewe flock (if you haven’t weighted and worked one out properly): standard-reference-srw-calculator-3.pdf (wool.com)
• The fit to join documents and flow chart – developed by MLA can be found here: Fit to Join — Improving ewe and lamb survival through pre-joining assessment | Meat & Livestock Australia (mla.com.au)
• The short video on how to interpret feed tests is shown here: https://youtu.be/RSzkF-DXqic?si=dKBFDcRHZ_3sK_Pf
• The MLA Australian Feedbase Monitor can be accessed here: https://www.mla.com.au/extension-training-and-tools/tools-calculators/australian-feedbase-monitor/

• My farm dashboard can be accessed here: https://myfarmdashboard.sfs.org.au/
• A few containment feeding resources are shown here – there is a video on different methods to feed ewes in containment: https://youtu.be/zVhriwemUmY and a webinar on setting up containment feeding for ewes can be accessed here: https://youtu.be/VYcrJ4QapsQp

Further resources for primary producers:

If you’re a primary producer experiencing challenging times in South Australia’s agriculture sector, there are a number of services available to support you.
The Department of Primary Industries and Regions has prepared a guide with information on help and services that are always available based on need.

Acknowledgement of information sources:

• SA Drought Hub, Felicity Turner - Turner Agri, Deb Scammel – Talking Livestock