Cattle offloaded due to rain

As farmers in northern Australia continue to benefit from widespread rain after years of drought and destruction, a pocket of farmers in Victoria's south-east are offloading cattle due to wetter-than-normal conditions.

In the last six weeks, the Scotts have sold more than 300 beef cattle through local prime and store markets, as well as AuctionsPlus, including 67 cows with calves at foot - touted as some of their best breeding stock.

"All the locals are telling me I haven't seen it wet yet and apparently it gets a lot worse than what it is at the moment," Mr Scott said.

The couple took up beef farming five years ago after relocating from a dairy farm in the Macalister Irrigation District at Maffra.

Their 160 hectares at Stony Creek in South Gippsland consists of mostly low-lying country.

In the five months to May 31, Stony Creek had received 531 millimetres of rainfall since the start of 2020.

At the same time last year, only 151mm of rain - less than a third compared to this year - had fallen.

Mr Scott said his operation had been largely successful by purchasing Speckle Park cattle from drought-affected NSW in the last 18 months.

However, the wet start to the year is causing cattle to sink between "three and five inches" in some paddocks.

"Cattle end up only eating one third of the grass available and then trample two thirds of it and it just goes to waste," Mr Scott said.

"We wouldn't normally sell this amount of cattle and certainly not this early but prices have been good so we're not complaining.

"The best we got was $3040 for some cows and calves, they were really top animals which I was hoping to keep."

About 25 kilometres down the road, dairy farmer Graeme Cope, Fish Creek, bought about 60 beef cattle to fatten in September but has since been forced to offload them.

"It was very wet in April and normally it's like that in late July and into August and September," Mr Cope said.

"The weather has settled but paddocks are still too soft so we've had to reduce cattle, which is a shame."

Mr Cope was grazing the beef cattle in turnout blocks but said conditions were that damp, dry dairy cows had taken precedence over the beef cattle which had been sold at recent markets.

Alex Scott & Staff Leongatha branch manager Dane Percyzk said some producers were exercising a degree of caution by forwarding cattle a few months earlier compared to previous years.

He said South Gippsland's soil and terrain, known for its red and grey earth and undulating hills and flat country, along with higher-than-usual rainfall were all contributing factors for the trend.

"We've had the wettest start to the year that people are saying they can remember," Mr Percyzk said.

"With strong prices, it's made it an easy decision to sell now but some of these cattle we're seeing in the saleyards we would normally see in spring."

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