Calving underway on Victorian dairy farms but producers wary of dry ahead

United Dairyfarmers of Victoria president Mark Billing said his Larpent dairy had just about finished calving and although some of his paddocks were still wet, it had been a good season.

"Grass growth has picked up and we're looking up to a reasonably-good spring," Mr Billing said.

However, he said regions south of Cobden and Colac were still quite wet and did struggle a bit through calving.

He said to counteract this, he knew of a few farmers who invested in barns to get their calves out of the wet.

"You tend to check them more regularly as well [in barns] and it's good for animal welfare so you can assist with husbandry while calving," he said.

Mr Billing said a lot of farmers he'd spoken to were keeping the Bureau of Meteorology's active El Nino alert top of mind when planning their programs for the next few months.

"Particularly as we think about our fertiliser programs for spring and ensuring we can get good-quality silage and pastures going into a dry year," he said.

On the other side of the state, Trafalgar dairy farmers Gill and Bryce Templeton do split calving and are halfway through their second drop of the year.

Ms Templeton said the weather had been kind and so far they'd had a great run.

But she admitted she was anxious leading up to summer.

"It's been a really-great winter and we haven't had a lot of issues calving, but I've heard a lot of people saying it's going to be quite a dry summer," she said.

"Because we haven't had that rain, we're thinking is it going to happen early? Is it going to go for longer? Are we going to run out of feed?

"And even the neighbour across the road just sold a heap of his beef cows because he's worried that he's going to run out of feed."

With a herd of 140 milking cows and a mix of Friesian and Jersey cattle, they have had 40 calves born so far, with the first drop born in March.

Ms Templeton said thanks to the current weather their grass was growing well enough that they didn't need to source fodder.

She said surrounding farmers in Trafalgar were generally staying positive as well.

"Even our neighbour out the back, I think he's been having a lot less issues with cows going down and getting greasy to get up and stuff like that," she said.