Western Victoria drought | Stock & Land - video Dailymotion

Mark Jacobs from Bushby Dreeite South says that, compared to previous droughts, "it's as bad as anything [he's] seen."

Transcript

00:00Since 1944, there's only been three years where we haven't had a break by this time.

00:05And looking even further back than that, it's pretty much unprecedented until you go back to the 1880s.

00:12So what people are putting up with is pretty tough conditions.

00:16And what are you doing at the moment to deal with those dry conditions in terms of feeding livestock?

00:21Well, it's pretty much what we've done in the past, and that is all the stock were put in containment areas very early.

00:28They've been fed a high energy fibre diet.

00:33And so condition score has been the major way that we've kept track of how our years are going.

00:40And that's very regular.

00:42We're feeding out 20 rolls of hay every second day.

00:47And we feed out pellets every other second day.

00:53We feed five kilos per cow.

00:57We just take it out in bulk of bags and cart it out in buckets and spread it out for them.

01:03And hopefully that'll get them through.

01:05And hopefully still it'll keep them cycling because the bulls are out there ready to join them.

01:11And Mark, how does it compare to previous droughts?

01:13It's as bad as anything I've seen.

01:16Because we had late rain.

01:18We never had much spring growth.

01:20We then had late rain.

01:22And that sort of broke up anything we had.

01:24We got a green shoot and then everything's gone.

01:27We've been feeding since March, I think.

01:31We started feeding hay.

01:32We were short running out of feed then.

01:34And what are you costing or what's it costing to feed out at the moment?

01:38Probably about $7,000 a week.

01:41And is that in pellets and hay?

01:43Pellets and hay, yes.