Drought isn’t an exception in livestock production, it’s a constant. While every season feels different, long-term success comes down to how well a system holds together in tough conditions. Managing uncertainty, making timely decisions, and using better information early are critical to maintaining consistency and performance over time.
This post is an extract from CEO and Co-Founder, Bill Mitchell’s fortnightly Optiweigh Insights email newsletter. To get a copy in your inbox, SUBSCRIBE HERE.
Livestock production is all about the seasons, and certainly in Australia, there is always somewhere in drought. The southern parts of Australia have been through a terrible time in recent years, and now it is our turn in northern NSW.
With record numbers of head being sold the dry conditions are on everyone’s lips around here, and the old line about droughts is getting repeated a fair bit: “This one’s different.” And it usually is.
The timing is different. The pasture base is different. The markets are different. Even the way it feels is different. But the more I’ve thought about it over the years, the more I’ve come to a slightly different view.
Drought isn’t really an exception. It’s part of farming.
We don’t operate in a world of “good years” and “bad years”. We operate in seasons. And over time, the biggest driver of how a business performs isn’t how much money it makes when everything lines up, it’s how well it holds together when it doesn’t.
There’s a lot of focus in agriculture on things like price risk, cost control, diversification. All important. But in my experience (backed up with some analysis of the numbers), seasonal risk outweighs all of them.
You can build a system that looks fantastic in a run of good years. But if it gives it all back in a tough one, then it’s not really a good system.
The real objective is something much less exciting, but much more important – consistency over time. And that really comes down to how you handle drought.
What I’ve always found is that the hardest part isn’t necessarily the cost of feeding. It’s the decisions that sit behind it.
There’s a point where you have to commit. You start spending real money, and you know you can’t do it forever. You’re making calls on ration, timing, stocking pressure. Often without really knowing how the animals are responding. And you’re hoping it breaks before you’ve gone too far.
That uncertainty is what makes it stressful.
For me, having better information has been one of the biggest shifts, not just financially but mentally.
When you can actually see what’s happening, the decision-making becomes a lot clearer. You’re no longer relying on how things look or what you think might be happening. You can see whether cattle are holding weight, gaining, or slipping, and how quickly that’s occurring.
The other thing I’ve come to appreciate is how important it is to start measuring before it feels necessary. By the time weight loss is obvious, you’re already behind. If you’ve got a baseline and you’re watching trends early, you’ve got time to respond. And in a drought, time is everything.
The earlier you see it, the more options you have. It also changes the way you think about what’s possible.
We tend to frame drought as something to survive, and that’s fair enough. But when you actually know what you’ve got, and how it’s performing, it does open up other options. You can be more deliberate about what you feed, which mobs you prioritise, when you sell, and what you replace with. You’re not just reacting, you’re making decisions with a bit more confidence behind them.
I also understand that investing in better information isn’t always an easy decision. It’s very easy to look at a number like $17,500 and question whether it’s justified. The answer to that is coming from our customers at Optiweigh. Our team here have the very great privilege to see what various producers are achieving when combining data with good advice.
A great example of this came from Ed Colless at Walgett. It’s pretty dry out there (understatement!) so Ed has been working with Dr Jill Kelly (consulting nutritionist, AHN).
Jill and Ed identified their production goals and then went about formulating a ration to achieve these at lowest possible cost. This involved getting some discount grain, testing the quality, checking for mycotoxins, and using it in a ration at the right rate to still achieve Ed’s production goals.
Having the Optiweigh in with the cattle was a key part of the strategy. It provides the feedback loop – proving that the ration is meeting the production objectives, and thus giving confidence that the cost savings are not just going to compromise production.
The end result is that with what Ed is saving on this ration, he is going to be producing beef at a cost much less than his sale price. And he still knows he is going to achieve his turnoff targets. With his business profitability locked in through good advice and good data, his $17,500 Optiweigh is starting to look pretty cheap!
At Glenbrook (both photos in this newsletter are from the last drought), Jacqui and I have sold all our big cattle as they got to target weight and not bought in any replacements. That has left us with reduced numbers and (we think) enough feed to keep them going for a while yet.
We’re not too worried if they don’t put on too much weight (if we can avoid a big feed bill) but we don’t want them going backwards. So our Optiweighs are out there full time making sure that things are going according to plan. It’s a fine line, so the data is critical.
These two different strategies highlight another aspect of drought. Just as every drought is different, so is every individual situation and response.
That’s why we’ve collated some of the strategies that we have seen and put them in an easy to read guide in the hope that it can prove helpful in determining a response that suits you and your business.