There will be no sunflowers this year at “Springfield”.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Spring Ridge farmer James Hockey held on until this month in the hope the property might get a decent rainfall, but it just wasn’t enough.
“We’ve got some storms through in the last couple of days, which is good but it’s getting too late now, unfortunately,” Mr Hockey said on Tuesday.
“[Crops] probably needed to go in last week at the latest.
“There’s nothing we can plant at the moment. We’re in the middle of no man’s land so we’ve got to wait until March when we plant cattle feed.”
READ ALSO:
It’s not all bad news – the farmer managed to get some sorghum and cotton into the ground late last year.
“In December, we had 20 or 30mm over a couple of falls, so we just took the punt,” Mr Hockey said.
“It was like now or never.”
He said he would have liked to plant about 1000 hectares of sorghum because the price is good but had to cut it back to 600. Likewise, cotton was cut back to about 250 hectares after 1200 hectares last year.
“The price was good for cotton [last year] so we went hard at it. This year, the sorghum price is better,” Mr Hockey said.
“This is our fourth season of cotton, and that’s where it’s taken over from sunflowers a bit ... It’s just an easier crop.”
Intermittent rainfall over the past few months has meant the farmer can back off feeding his cattle after having to turn his property into essentially a “big feed lot” for eight months.
“From May through to December at the peak, we were feeding about 900 head,” Mr Hockey said.
“We were lucky we had about 400 tonnes of wheat and I think we baled close to 500 tonnes of sorghum stubble.
“We’ve had to buy in probably three truckloads of ailed barley crop and three truckloads of forage sorghum.”
“Springfield” is now back to 500 breeders and the farm hasn’t had to buy in any more feed.
“I’ve got through,” Mr Hockey said.
“We got all our steers to feedlot weight and our heifers to joining weight and sold the rest we didn’t want and managed to get cows and calves through to this point and managed to get enough grass, so we’re back through to grass at the moment.
“I’ve got enough grass until the end of February if it doesn’t run out [but] the beauty of cropping if the sorghum doesn’t make it, I’ll make it hay again.”
