Curlewis stud Wallawong pushing through in drought

Owners of Murray Greys stud Wallawong, Lachlan and Kate James are racking up bills of $30,000 a month to feed their cattle and have planted millet in the hope it can provide future feed.

“If this next rain comes through, we should be right because we’ve planted crops,” Mrs James said.

“If we could get another 20mm to add to what’s in the ground, it would take it through quite a long way for a couple of months.”

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She said clouds had started to build up in “the pitiless blue sky” and she felt more hopeful.

“The fact that it’s greener does just make you happy,” she said.

“Everything is germinating but now because there is no moisture underneath it, we need the follow-up rain this week and if we get that we can back off buying feed but we’re still booked up several loads of hay and almond hulls from Victoria.”

The James have been forced to sell off another 40 head of cattle, weaning calves early and selling off older cows who won’t calve again.

“We can’t sell off the good breeding we’ve spent years developing and buy it all back later so we just have to decide what animals and family lines are the most important and keep that core breeding herd alive,” Mrs James said.

Mrs James said she spent “days” applying for every government and agency grant and aid that she could and while they had received 10 bales of hay from Aussie Helpers and some assistance for groceries, household bills, what they really needed was hard cash.

“It’s very difficult to access any assistance with actual feed bills,” she said. 

“You can have plenty of groceries, which we’re grateful for and household bills to keep your household running but actual money to pay for feed is very limited.

“Salvos was good. Their disaster relief fund provided $3000 and that was helpful because it was cash in the bank at the end of last month to pay hay bills. 

“We have applied for the freight subsidy amount [from the government], but haven’t received anything back yet but we should qualify so I’m kind of relying on that to come in before the end of this month."

Mrs James said they had to “evaluate each type of feed for the protein and energy and what you’re paying for it and work it out”. 

“We found that we can use almond hulls at a more reasonable price than other things that are available,” she said.

“There’s new season hay coming in in Victoria so that will ease the prices of some of the hay being offered.”

State government funding for a new feed mixer has made a big difference to time and labour, cutting down feeding time from 10 hours to three.

“The big difference is you can put a whole round bale or whole square bales inside the mixer and it just chops it up,” Mrs James said.

“[Before], we were breaking it down and putting it in by hand.

“The new mixer is two and a half times bigger so we can actually save labour in feeding cattle because if we were to feed everything, we would need to do three or four loads in the smaller mix we’ve had,” she said.

“You can possibly use less expensive and lower quality feeds and create a mix you couldn't do before.”

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The James are always planning ahead in the hope of staying ahead of the drought.

“We’ve budgeted and borrowed as if we're going to feed until next April because we could be doing that because we know what summer is like here,” Mrs James said.

“We have had long meetings with our bank about what we're going to do, and we’re going to keep going. 

“We are here for the long term; it’s just going to take extra years to pay it off.”