B+LNZ launches new Extreme Dry Management Toolkit

Wednesday, 31 January 2018

The booklet – available in hard copy and as a pdf – is split into three sections:

Leading into extreme dry.
As the extreme dry intensifies.
Recovering from extreme dry.

In this way, you can cut to the section that is relevant to you at a particular point in time.

Within each of the three sections, the information is grouped into:

You and your team.
Animal health and welfare.
Management strategies.
Feeding strategies.
Financial support.

Make decisions early

The key message repeated throughout the resource is: Make decisions early.

This minimises the impact of the extreme dry on your business and increases the likelihood of containing any financial losses to the current season.

Farmer walking the talk

Inverary Station Manager Bert Oliver advocates early decision making and not delaying action. “You might think you are missing out on things, but it’s when you don’t make those early-decisions that you wish you had.”

During the 2015/16 extreme dry event, the station weaned five-year ewes early at 60 days, which allowed the sale of 1100 cull ewes on a higher schedule in December. Other mobs were assessed week-by-week. To protect the performance of future breeding stock, 1500 hoggets and 140 heifers were wintered off-farm.

“Well before the start of lambing and calving, it’s important to identify which trading mobs can be first “first cab off the rank”, when the need arises. Which mobs are your lowest priority? When will you decide to act?”