Mice add to grain grower’s woes

Grain growers are fighting a losing battle with mice — but one farmer says the government could do more to help. This is what she wants.

The mice outbreak has prompted a push for a farmers’ mutual to protect farmers’ income. Picture: Trent Perrett

Trying to control a mice outbreak in hay stacks is like “hitting your head against a brick wall” for NSW grain grower Tracy Blackburn, with the issue adding to a string of challenges her farm has faced over recent years.

And she is calling for the government to back a farmers’ mutual, which would provide farm income protection for broadacre farmers, to help the situation.

Ms Blackburn said this year she went “hell for leather” making hay bales on her property.

But some may have to be burned, after mice caused destruction.

It comes after Ms Blackburn’s operation has struggled getting through drought.

“We got through that, then we got rain and we basically had to sell our souls to get the crop in and get to the end of the year, got to the end of the year now you’re trying to market the stuff and you’ve got ships stuck in canals overseas which has buggered up the container stuff,” she said.

“Trying to fill in all these holes from the last year and then these mice, it is compounding on top of everything else.”

Ms Blackburn said a farmers’ mutual would allow growers to take initiative and “back themselves” to make decisions for their own operation.

“One of the things I have been pushing for, for the past 12 months, is to get a farmers’ mutual going, where, at least in the cropping sector we have multi-peril income protection which then gives us the resources to help us deal with stuff like this,” she said.

To bait just their farming country, excluding grazing land, Ms Blackburn said at one kilogram a hectare it would require 11 tonnes of mouse bait for one path.

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