Proactive efforts lead to strong crops in central Victoria

Slugs and disease stood no chance against Tom McDonnell’s preventive measures on his Darraweit Guim farm, as canola and wheat look promising.

Wheat and canola are the standouts of Central Victorian farmer Tom McDonnell’s season, after proactive measures that led to reasonable crops.

He is fifth generation on the Darraweit Guim farm, with canola, wheat, vetch and oats in this year, alongside his self-replacing Merino flock.

“The past few years have been rough, but this year has been better,” he said.

“Spring is cutting out a bit now but that’s to be expected.”

Darraweit Guim farmer Tom McDonnell says his wheat and canola are standouts this season. Picture: Zoe Phillips

Mr McDonnell said a drier winter suited their season, as their rain total dropped about 20 per cent this year, but it came at the right time.

He expected their canola to yield 2.5-3 tonnes to the hectare, with windrowing starting in the next week.

“I’m reasonably optimistic and reasonably confident,” Mr McDonnell said.

He said they were concerned about slugs, disease and worms after a wet summer, but preventive measures helped their season with minimal slug pressure.

They used UAN as nitrogen supply to encourage winter growth, and followed up with urea for spring nitrogen. Meanwhile, vetch silage is used for weed management in their crop rotation.

Mr McDonnell said lambing percentage sat at about 100pc, and received “good reward for effort” with feeding Merino wether lambs over winter on a barley lupins mix.

Their Merino rams were from Willera, which he said gave them a larger carcass when presenting lambs for sale.

They class out their bottom-end Merino ewes, which are joined to a Poll Dorset ram for terminal production.

Tom McDonnell runs a sheep and cropping farm at Darraweit Guim. Picture: Zoe Phillips