Another Day Feeding Sheep

As I was feeding the sheep today I started to get the feeling that soon the farm would be back to normal. No more feeding sheep, pasture growing and fit sheep running around. It's going to be another month but it's coming. This is the third difficult season in a row and it had started to make me question every thing I have done in the past. I have been running a high input high stocking rate system for the past 10 years and in 9 out of ten years it has been successful. We use rotational grazing, perennial pastures and late lambing, all to maximise profits. All the things that every benchmarking survey, consultants report and research program has proven to maximise returns, we have done. They where right, it does maximise returns, except when it doesn't rain, two years in a row. On the other hand cropping has been a great success. Implementing the best practice approach has yielded great returns regardless of the year. At times cropping has been stressful, but nothing like farming sheep. The sheep are totally reliant on you providing all there feed, when they lamb and when they are shorn. With cropping if it doesn't rain, you don't put the crop in. Your not committed until it rains. With sheep all the the husbandry decisions are made before the season starts, before it rains. This is ok in a normal year when it rains at the normal times, but in a drought when it doesn't rain you can't just say ok we wont run sheep this year. Your committed and you have to see it through.

Having been through the past two years I can see why many farmers run very conservative stocking rates. Sometimes it may be the things that happen to us over a short period of time that shape the rest of our lives. Despite how I may feel at the moment,I don't think I am one of those people. I look over what I have achieved over the past decade. The farming system, including the way the farm looks, the stock and there performance and the life we have made here. It's all of those things that will fire me up in three weeks time when I stop feeding and will keep me going as I attempt another 20 shots at this farming game.