EAST Gippsland farmer Peter Kramme has sold his lambs three months early, and destocked all cattle that is not core to breeding, in order to get through the current drought.
The cattle and sheep producer farms on three properties in Johnsonville, just east of Bairnsdale, and said he considers the drought a “challenge”.
“To me, a drought is a challenge, and I’m very challenged by this drought, and how I will survive it, but a real disaster would be low prices, so we might have a drought, but at least we’ve got good prices,” Mr Kramme said.
“The last drought we had, we sent our sheep in and got nothing for them, so in that respect, things are totally different.”
Mr Kramme normally sells lambs at the Bairnsdale markets in January, February and March, but this year, sold them only three weeks ago, in November.
“I’ve never sold them this early, but we had no feed left, so I sold 300 last week, and 90 the fortnight before,” Mr Kramme said.
“I bought in five tonnes of maize to feed the sheep, which made the ewes fat, and the lambs ended up being the best they have ever been at this time of year.”
He said because they were fed well, he averaged the same price with these lambs that he averaged with last year’s lambs, $110/head, despite selling them many months earlier.
The lambs, who are out of Corriedale ewes, were also shorn prior to being sold.
“There are so many store lamb buyers who don’t have the facilities to shear sheep, so they won’t even look at woolly sheep,” he said.
“I shear them so they can buy them and put them on their irrigated land, have no issues with them, and then in two month’s time, sell them again.”
He said he plans to put the money made from his store lambs towards four month’s worth of upcoming loan repayments.
“Then I know I won’t have to worry about paying my repayments for a few months, so I can concentrate on the day to day running of the business,” he said.
Mr Kramme said his cattle are struggling.
“We calve in July and August, and I’ve been feeding them since then, probably a total of six truckloads of hay, plus the hay I already had before,” he said.
“We normally sell them in the May of the following year, and they’ve still got a lot of growing to do yet.”
He said he has sold all of the cattle that is not core to breeding.
“I’ve sold about 35 cows and calves, and some steers and heifers,” he said.
He said he joined fewer heifers in October this year than normal.
“I still have about 125 heifers, but I’ve only joined 35, whereas I normally join 50 or 60,” he said.
“We don’t know what’s ahead, this could go on for another 12 months, and once they’re in calf, there’s no coming back, you have to keep feeding them.”
He said if the drought continues, he will have to sell the unjoined heifers.
“If some rain comes, we might be able to keep them, and then next year we can sell them as older cows,” he said.
“I think I’ll be able to hold onto them until at least Christmas, I’ve got some more hay coming, and then we’ll just reassess then.”
