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MAY, 2014
JERSEY HERD LEADS THE WAY
BUXTON SNAILS GAIN PACE
PAGES 4 - 5
486 Whitehorse Road, Surrey Hills, 3127
WINTER WARMTH & HEATING
PAGES 8 - 9
PAGES 16 - 17
Hope follows rain By DAVID PALMER
at Warragul’s Farm World expo last month for their annual sale. Using the Helmsman auction method, potential buyers submitted their bids over the first three days of the event. Rodwells’ Tony Hodges (left) from Pakenham, Lynford Park Blonde d�Aquitaines’ Ron Radford from Callignee and Rahnik Blondes’ Rudi Spiteri, Nagambie, lined up stock for the event. More Farm World photographs pages 6 and 7.
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farmed a 460ha property at Mount Wallace between Ballan and Geelong - with annual rainfall of 600mm - also welcomed the rain as it closely followed the weaning of their 180 six-month-old calves at the beginning of April. But they kept the calves in a weaning pen at the cattle yards for a week and fed them hay before releasing them on wellgrown winter-active lucerne. They had also luckily sown 28ha of annual ryegrass just before the rain and plan to sow oats for grazing and grain. But the steady rain of the autumn break was not fortuitous for the Passing Clouds winery at Musk, near Daylesford. Winery partner Cameron Leith Cameron said that grapes were not quite ripe when the rain arrived and picking would have started during the week-long rain if it had been dry enough. The end result was that sugar content and avor suffered “and we started to see a bit of mouldâ€?. However, it was too late to spray a fungicide and they had to live with the damaged grapes. Passing Clouds also has a vineyard of its own and buys grapes from others near Kingower north west of Bendigo. „ Continued page 2
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BLONDE INVASION: Blonde d’Aquitaine stud cattle breeders took over the yards again
LIGHT rainfall of up to 85 millimetres across three days in April marked for most farmers in the Southern Farmer region and much of southeastern Australia the best autumn break since 1974. It came at least a week ahead of the usual Anzac Day start to the winter crop-sowing season, enabling seeding into still-warm soil. The rain brought signiďŹ cant relief to father-and-son team Duncan and Tom McDonnell and their families. Their 2500-hectare farm at Darraweit Guim was almost totally burned in the MicklehamKilmore ďŹ re last February. As reported in this newspaper in March, they estimated that about 10,000 of their sheep had died in the ďŹ re and its aftermath. But fortunately they managed to save more than 4000. Tom McDonnell said the good autumn break was welcome although towards the end of last month he was employing Mansfield-based helicopter pilot Dave Empy and his sprayer-equipped machine to kill recently-germinated weeds on very steep parts of their farm.
With some difďŹ culty the McDonnells have managed to acquire about 4500 Merinos producing 19-micron wool to restock. But Mr McDonnell said that they were not interested in small lines of 300 and 400 ewes and had concentrated on clearing sales to buy big lines – one lot totalled 1800 head – in western Queensland and Western Australia. Freight alone from WA amounted to between $25 and $30 a head. He said that even with lighter stocking since the autumn break he had run the sheep feedlotstyle on hay to ensure that pastures become well-established before they are grazed. Mr McDonnell said subclover was the main pasture species in the 720-millimetre rainfall area as white clover was too susceptible to summer heat to survive for long. Lack of fencing has been a problem to properly managing the property, too. Initially the McDonnells thought that they would have to replace about 70 kilometres of fencing but that has since reduced to 40 or 50km. Maureen and John Fish, who for the last 30 years have
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