Decide & Thrive | livestock decision-making tools

When a drought hits, the pressure to sell stock fast is real. But sell too many, or sell the wrong ones, or not planning for the recovery, and you're setting yourself up for a slower, harder rebuild.

That's the problem University of New England's Professor Lewis Kahn and Dr Gus Rose have tackled with support from the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund.

Working with CSIRO and the University of Central Queensland, Professor Kahn's team developed decision-making tools for Merino, Central and Southern Queensland beef, and Southern Australian beef producers.

“Selling too many will slow the rebuilding phase and selling the wrong breeders will impact future production and financial security,” Professor Kahn says.

Finding the balance between immediate production (phenotype) and long-term performance (genotype) is the key.”

Professor Kahn says minimising financial, environmental and social impacts of drought on livestock producers relies on developing an overall management plan that supports informed decisions about:

• the extent of the livestock sell-down and the order of stock classes to be sold,
• the traits to use for culling breeders,
• feeding versus selling and associated issues of biosecurity, feeding and water infrastructure and labour availability,
• how to rebuild the herd/flock.

Using commercial data, the project modelling tackled severe one-year drought situations where 50% of the herd would need to be culled to meet forage supply, and where there hadn’t been much livestock data collection.

The model then compared the impact from culling breeders on either: lower body condition score, lower mature weight, greater age, or at random or not culling and feeding.

Hundreds of simulations of the model using a 10-year period were performed with the chance of good and dry years based on historic climate.

Professor Kahn said that when culling breeders, the team found that the best traits to use were the lower condition cows, and the oldest Merino ewes.

“Modelling indicated that producers would be up to $150/hectare better off over a 10-year period from using these traits, with the benefit dependent on stocking rate and production system,” he said.

“The benefits of keeping only the better condition score cows were less feeding and higher weaning rates, and for younger Merino ewes, more quickly rebuilding the breeding flock.”

The key findings from case studies developed to compare the feeding versus selling options were:

• When breeders were sold in response to drought, restoring the livestock inventory so that stocking rate matched carrying capacity, feed and financial budgets at the earliest possibility was more profitable than rebuilding the flock through breeding, or not selling and feeding.
• In the short-term, profit was better for the option of selling and breeding back, but this changed from Year 3, because a smaller herd/flock from breeding back meant less income, higher overhead costs per head, and therefore less profit.
• The option of not selling and feeding breeders, became more profitable than selling and breeding back, from Year 3, but required the capacity of the business to finance the increased costs due to feeding during drought.
• Selling breeders and buying back-in, was the most profitable option because it avoided the costs of feeding and rebuilt the herd in Year 2 through stock purchases.

For producers looking to the future by determining pasture availability based on a localised weather outlook, Professor Kahn recommends Ag360.com.au, a free tool hosted by UNE and supported by the SQNNSW Innovation Hub. It predicts rainfall, soil moisture, pasture growth and animal weight, up to six months in advance.

Download the resources

• Southern Beef – fact sheets 1-4 (8.6mb PDF)
• Central and Southern Queensland Beef – fact sheets 1-4 (12mb PDF)
• Merino – fact sheets 1-3 (11.6mb PDF)

The Decide and Thrive project received support from the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund, via the Drought Resilience Innovation Grants.