Mortlake’s James Knight is ‘thinking outside the box’ in drought

Old sheep feeding trailers, interstate agistment and flipping a business has helped a Mortlake beef producer James Knight navigate drought.

Old sheep feeding trailers, interstate agistment and flipping a business has helped a Mortlake beef producer navigate drought.

James Knight currently manages 1350 pregnant Angus females and 1250 young cattle, while he has destocked steers and sent 480 cows to Grafton, NSW, on agistment.

“When we did our feed budgets earlier and I put zero growth in for May, I knew we were in trouble,” James said.

“You really only had two options, you put wheels under your livestock and sent them off farm, or you purchase fodder in.

“It was a matter of thinking outside the box instead of panicking about where we’d get roughage from.”

Sam Monk has delivered feed to Mortlake beef producer James Knight. Picture: Yuri Kouzmin

James said he bought farmers’ old “rusty” sheep feeding trailers and used his share cropping infrastructure to be able to feed pellets.

“We would always have a year-and-a-half, or two years of fodder on hand, but that was exhausted. We had to go to the market,” he said.

“When I realised we wouldn’t be able to meet the business’ needs in the form of a bale, I converted the whole business over to feeding pellets.”

Meanwhile in early May, he flew to Grafton to meet with a family having a fantastic season who could take cows on agistment.

James recently recorded 90mm across his Mortlake and Macarthur properties, and moved his stock to containment to protect the pasture but said they had a “long 50-60 days” ahead.

“I’m very big picture in what we’re going through at the moment, we aren’t guaranteed a spring,” he said.

Sam Monk says demand for feed is “huge”. Picture: Yuri Kouzmin

Feed contractor and dairy farmer Sam Monk has delivered truckloads to James, and serviced about 200 clients through his Monk and Son Ag Services company.

They worked across South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, but he said 95 per cent of the work was between Victoria and NSW.

Sam said the demand for feed was “huge”.

“We bought 10,000 tonne that we would’ve brought back down this weekend,” he said.

Sam was currently sourcing feed from NSW for his Victorian clients, but had only been able to supply hay to those on a first-come, first-serve basis.

“You can’t find any cereal hay anymore, that’s non-existent really. If you could get to WA, I’m sure there’s hay over there,” he said.

Premier Jacinta Allan recently announced farmers would be able to streamline feed processes, shortening a plant biosecurity permit process to two business days instead of 10.