The drought is bad enough without roos eating the hay

PRODUCER concerned that kangaroos are eating his cattle feed down on the farm.

Max the dog beside the corn stubble the roos have taken a liking to at Greymare. Picture: Gerard Walsh

DRY AS A BONE column in Bush Telegraph by Gerard Walsh - A lighter look at rural life

THE roos are eating round bales of hay in a paddock at our property at Greymare.

They have been spotted at the hay and you only have to look at each end of the six bales at the ends to see the damage.

It won't achieve anything to work out the cost of the roos eating the hay as I don't know a way of making them pay.

As a guess, I suspect it might be up to $500 by the time all the hay is fed to the cows. The cost of the hay was more than $3000.

One of the jobs for the next wet season will be to increase the height of the fence around the hay shed with some netting and a few extra steel posts.

We need the higher fencing around the hay shed as the roos like lucerne hay even more than forage sorghum or corn stubble.

The lucerne hay is twice the price of corn stubble and when the choice is there, the roos prefer the lucerne.

We will start feeding the corn stubble this week after selling our last lot of cattle before spring.

This week, we sent the eight best unjoined cows to market.

Here's hoping the good cow prices from last week will at least be maintained.

Rain disappointing

I WROTE about the worsening dry conditions last week and little has changed.

We did have rain - 5mm to 16mm.

I spoke to Freestone residents who told me 11mm was helpful on their oats and there was as much as 16mm at Yangan.

Wheatvale had around 10mm and farmer Chris Cantwell hit the nail on the head when he said in a Daily News story that we needed 50mm rain now and then another 50mm a week later.