"By failing to prepare, you are planning to fail." Benjamin Franklin.
Last month we looked at how the fear of El Niño outweighs the reality; that it doesn’t mean there is no chance of rain for the next 6 months… If you want a refresher, see last month's article.
El Niño or not, our rainfall is ALWAYS variable. We cannot control when or how much rain we get.
We need to focus on what we can control, so here are 7 quick tips. There are many more tips I could give, but these are a great start.
Post a comment and let us know your top tip that’s not mentioned here!
Tip #1: Manage your grazing.
It has been a very dry year for many in Southern QLD and NSW. There are plenty of places out there that were already bare dirt and skinny cows months ago.
However, there are also still places with good feed and even a smattering of green feed. Not because they had better rain, but because they managed their feed better.
There is so much that I will say in the future about grazing management, but for this article remember the basics:
Tip #2: Be prepared if it doesn’t rain much.
While El Niño does not mean that you automatically get no rain, we live in an extremely variable climate. There are always periods it doesn’t rain much.
Being prepared will look differently depending on your farm and management contexts. Here’s just three of many options you could consider:
Tip #3: Be prepared for when it rains.
A large part of this comes back to grazing management. You need to leave your land with enough ground cover so that when it rains, even if not much, your grass wants to respond and grow.
Also, when good rains return, you want all that rain soaking in to grow grass, not running off to your neighbour.
If you have some cropping ground, this means having your planter ready to go to take advantage of a decent storm, or perhaps planting some amount dry in expectation of rain.
This also means having animals ready to go to be able to graze feed once it rains again. This might be by having capital ready to purchase stock, by keeping some of your own animals on agistment, or by breeding your own animals up quickly.
Tip #4: Look for opportunities.
While nearly everyone else I meet out there has their head down complaining about the weather and prices, we can be out looking for opportunities.
Here’s a couple quick examples off the top of my head:
We ourselves have some of our auction quality rams up on our online “sheep shop” for only $1090.
Tip #5: Continue breeding.
The sheep that thrive, produce a good fleece, and breed a couple healthy lambs in drier seasons will serve you extremely well into the future.
I have heard all sorts of reports flying around: from people knocking wether lambs on the head in the marking cradle, to people shooting sheep, and many people not planning to join this year.
I am horrified. But at the same time, I am secretly excited because I know that our sheep will thrive, and we will be producing top quality lambs into a market with much reduced supply next year.
If you are planning on keeping a core of breeding ewes anyway, it’s quite a small investment to put a ram out with them.
It works out to be approximately the same overall feed requirement to sell an extra third of your ewes and join them, compared to keeping all the ewes, and running them as wethers.
The benefits are:
Tip #6: Focus on survivability and fertility.
These traits will always, always stand you in good stead when we have drier seasons.
From less feeding to less drenching and jetting, having survivable flocks makes sheep management so much easier and less stressful.
Fertility opens you up to so much more flexibility.
It allows you to reduce your numbers right back in poor seasons, then explode your numbers back up in a very short time. We heard of some clients more than doubling their ewe numbers in 18 months by rejoining after only 8 months with good lambing percentages.
Sheep have the added advantage of being able to build stock numbers back very quickly by keeping wethers (at the cost of short term cashflow).
Tip #7: Focus on the things that truly count.
At the end of the day, no matter what the weather or markets do, we cannot afford to define our lives by our farms.
We all have family and friends that count on us, whose lives we enrich and who enrich our lives.
Let’s not neglect them. Spend time building memories with them.
For us here at Rissmerino, our faith in Jesus Christ is also central to our lives and keeps us from obtaining all our worth from our farm. God shows us our worth by being willing to die for us.
Make some time to do the things and be with the people you love, that give you purpose.
Hopefully this has helped you think a bit differently and more optimistically about the future of the merino and farming industry. We need more Leader Sheep stepping out and forging ahead.
Please leave a comment with your top tip to managing our variable climate!
With kind regards
The Rissmerino Team
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