• Farmers managing seasonal risk successfully – March 2024 farmer case studies
   
• Chris Nixon, Orbost, East Gippsland
• John Versteden, Longwarry, West Gippsland
• Evan Nicholas, Biggara, North East Victoria
   
• Victorian seasonal climate summary (summer 2023/24) and outlook (autumn 2024) in brief
• Victorian dairying areas seasonal soil moisture condition assessment: summer review and autumn update 2023/24
• Receiving Milking the Weather
• Contact

Maria Rose, Dairy Extension Officer, Agriculture Victoria 

It’s 6 months since our last update from both Chris and John. We’ll find out about how last spring and the summer just gone worked out for them, and what their planned management strategies for this autumn and beyond are.

Evan, who is a first timer as a Milking the Weather case study farmer, will tell us how things work on the Nicholas family dairy farm. This being Evan’s first account is in the context of dealing with a changing climate and managing seasonal risk successfully, including the relevant back story, what their spring and summer was like and what their management strategies are for this current autumn.

A dry but high milk producing spring

It was a very dry winter and calving was extremely easy this year because it continued to be dry. But by September, because it was still dry, and we were struggling with having enough paddock feed, we were continuing to feed silage, eating into fodder reserves.

We sold all of our 85 carryover cows in one hit. We milked them that one morning mid-September and put them on the truck straight after. It was dry and we were struggling with fresh grass so why waste it on carryover cows.

It continued to be very dry over spring, but the remaining dairy cows still milked really well as they were in excellent condition. They were still doing 32 litres on average over spring!

Complain today, rejoice tomorrow

Also, we ended up selling nearly 600 head of beef cattle around the same time, as we were in deep trouble pasture wise. This was 300 more than we had anticipated we would sell at the start of last spring, but we had to do it and we are so glad we did. The price was not great – we got down to $600 /head for some which is below our cost of production. But as I say, “Today I complain about the price and tomorrow I wake up and say, “Thank Christ I am not feeding them.”

Whilst this will impact our cash flow this year because we sold so many beef cattle, we will be fully stocked again with beef cattle due to keeping growing weaners on rather than selling them and things won’t be too bad overall.

Taking a punt pays off

After selling off the batch of 600 beef cattle in September and October, we decided to take a punt on some rain, and renovate 80 hectares to triticale (on country that needed renovation). We harvested this in January and got 540 big square bales of hay (250 tonne roughly) and now the paddocks are being sown to permanent pasture.

The main reason behind taking the punt was that in addition to the cost of buying the hay in, it costs about $110 to get it here. If this punt didn’t pay off the worst that would’ve happened was losing the energy and the fuel used to level off two paddocks and the cost of some seed. 

But it did pay off. So now we’ve got a supply of suitable hay for calving cows at a much reduced cost to us.

Ending up with a wet summer

It continued to be dry through the spring, by the start of November we’d only had 350 millimetres of rain for the year.

Pasture growth was virtually non-existent at this stage. Even on the river flats we were heavily feeding grain and silage trying to maintain our pasture wedge as that’s our peak milk production time. And then it rained early/mid-November, and pretty much all through December and most of January. So, we ended up with a lovely wet summer with lots of green grass, virtually no silage feeding and not surprisingly, a fair bit of topping going on. We’ve only just began feeding silage in earnest in the last couple of weeks as it really has started drying out again.

The only downside to last summer

Our paddocks have deteriorated quite a lot over this last summer because of the more than usual abundance of distichum due to all the rain we had. So, we will be spraying out quite a lot of paddocks including 20% of the river flats this autumn to resow for permanent pasture.

Rebuilding our feed pad

We finally managed to start rebuilding our feed pad in late January because it got so wet over Christmas. Leaving the old geohex (plastic turf and substrate stabiliser) there, we put a thick layer of gravel over that and then a thin layer of finely crushed rock to install a layer of new geohex on. We also extended it a bit.

We didn’t lift out the old geohex layer because it would be such a big job and it is brittle. I think what we’ve done will be better than if we removed the old geohex, because it now acts as a matting underneath the gravel. It’s like putting reo into your concrete – it will help stabilise that base. Well, that’s the theory and whether it works, we’ll find out, no doubt. But we are quietly confident it will work. We are just waiting for the fine crushed rock that we put over the new layer of geohex to settle down a bit to finish it off.

Feeding heifers well over spring pays off

When we weighed the dairy heifers last August, they were looking very poor. They only weighed a tad over 220 kgs on average. We really had to bring their weight up fast. Not only do they look magnificent this first week in March, having them on a high rising plain of nutrition brought them up to their target weight of 330 kg, and contributed to them cycling and holding to joining well.

Their first pregnancy test resulted in an in-calf rate after 4 weeks of AI of 72%. We are still yet to do a second pregnancy test to see what the 4 weeks of mop up bulls achieved with the remaining 28% of the heifers. From the jaws of disaster, we have actually done pretty well.

An amazing fodder crop

Our current maize crop consists of 4 hectares close to the dairy and our normal fodder block down the road of 32 hectares. I am physically checking the larger crop now to determine if it’s ready for harvest for silage making. It is looking magnificent and will definitely be ready for cutting in the next week or two depending on the availability of our contractor. 

The 32 hectare forage block had a pea, oat and lentil fodder mix put in it prior to putting in the maize crop which we harvested for silage in September. It’s quite a good feed for the cows because of its obvious high protein content. We’ve grown and used this protein crop blend before and we can mix it in with a bit maize silage, when needed, which is very handy.

Noticeable herd health improvement

I am continuing to persevere with a non-conventional fertiliser program which I’ve described in previous updates. The cost is about the same if we had stayed using conventional fertilisers. I have not seen any noticeable drop in grass production.

Our cell count is only around 80,000 which is way lower than it used to be before we changed 4 years ago. We are definitely getting herd health benefits as a result - whether that be direct or indirect. So, we are sticking with it for now until we see a turn for the worst. We currently only treat 3 or 4 cows a month for mastitis which is nothing really for us as its way less compared to what it used to be.

Officially a spring calving herd only again

At the start of autumn, we are still milking 510 cows. We have no autumn calvers, so we are a total spring calving herd now. It’s taken 3 years from when we made our mind up.

We used to be just seasonal but coming out of the drought years we were joining the heifers that never got pregnant to boost our numbers. Looking back that was a very bad idea. So, it’s unlikely we’ll be doing that again. I don’t know what we were thinking at the time! 

A fertile herd is our main focus

Currently, we do give our heifers that second chance to join but we just sell them off and they do not come back into the herd. Because if we take your eye off the game, we will fall into the trap of maintaining a stock gap to keep our numbers up when we don’t need to. We found that as we kept more on because we gave them another chance to calve, we were getting a less fertile herd. Now we just don’t milk them on. Everything that doesn’t calve in spring and is not pregnant, is sold to keep pressure on maintaining high herd fertility. 

Milking is more fun now

It has taken a few years to get our fertility back under control. Because we are now selling all our problem cows early, we are enjoying milking once again as we are spending way less time treating and drafting cows during milking.

Healthy level of fodder on hand

At the start of autumn, the pasture feed wedge is rather good.  We’ve got plenty of grass in front of us, even though it is starting to get noticeably drier.

We still have half a pit of maize silage from last year because we didn’t need to feed much over this last summer, because of all the grass.

During November and December as our feed wedge got out of control, we harvested genuine feed surplus into 250 or so round bales of silage. We also have two smaller pits of grass silage that we haven’t used from previous years. As I alluded to before, we are about to get a whole heap of maize silage.

If things got really bad, we would survive a pretty long time with the level of fodder, we have on hand. At least a full year easily. And that’s my risk management strategy because when you buy in feed here the freight cost increases the cost greatly. It is much cheaper to make silage when feed is abundant and to store it away, than to have to buy it in when things go pear shaped.

Being prepared this autumn

Our main risk (a bit like last year) will be a failed autumn break.

Our biggest problem to conquer in order to deal with this is that the kikuyu has grown so prolifically. Kikuyu as many from dryland areas can vouch for is that it forms such a thick thatch. Managing the kikuyu through the autumn to get the residues down so ryegrass and clover can come up through it is the whole aim now. Rather than spraying the kikuyu, as it dries out, we are just using grazing pressure to push it down and to get it under control. We are using our milkers to do that and feeding out of our decent quality silage counteracts the inferior quality of the kikuyu.  

As mentioned earlier, we are renovating a fair chunk of our river flats and we will be over sowing our kikuyu paddocks with annual rye grass once we get that thatch under control.

After a wet summer, getting a dry autumn is pretty much normal, so we are well prepared for that eventuality given we have at least one years’ worth of milker feed quality silage up our sleeves.

The next trigger for us is Anzac Day. We need to see an autumn break by then because otherwise winter will be tough as there won’t be enough pasture growth over May before the winter arrives. If it hasn’t rained by then, we will look at numbers again and get rid of cows that are empty as our first priority. It’s just an ongoing process year in, year out!

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Another magic spring overall

This last spring was just as magic as the one the year before overall. We got a little bit tight through October because it was a little bit cooler, and we probably didn’t get the temperatures to get our peak growth. But to make up for it, we got those more ideal conditions in November. 

We finished up feeding a little bit of vetch through October because that’s our peak production month. We could actually feed that out in the paddock which wasn’t particularly hard to do because it wasn’t wet. Normally that would be a No No.

Our calving pattern is pretty tight, with everything usually in within 9 weeks. So, when we’ve got high feed demands it happens pretty quickly. We finished feeding vetch for about 2.5 weeks in October just to hold the peak. But once we got through to early November it was cruisy from then on and we’ve only just started to feed silage from about a week ago (the last one in February). An accompanying buoyant milk price has been the icing on the cake.

We did get a bit of a storm a couple of weeks back (the one that hit Mirboo North), but it didn’t have the intensity around here like in other parts of South Gippsland.

Uncanny timing

We had a 70 mm down pour in December that would normally cause some flooding issues but because we were starting to get dry around that time, it all soaked in. Everything happened at the time it should’ve happened. It’s nice to know what the best it can be looks like.

Healthy fodder reserves

We will have enough feed reserves to cope with most possible scenario over the next 12 months at least. This is an advantageous position to be in as the last 2 summers have been amazing for us, so the third one might just be a doozy, and we’ll be ready for that. This includes being prepared enough for a drier/later autumn closer towards June.  

Our feed reserves in this first week of autumn are really high compared to what we had this time last year. 

We’ve only just starting using our fodders store in this first week of March. So, even if we have 100 days that are dry from now on, we will still have 40% of fodder on hand at the end of this milking season. Things are looking pretty rosy from that perspective.

Hoping for a mid to end of May autumn break

If we were to get an early autumn break that would be really nice on the one hand. But on the other, it will have big ramifications for us through the wintertime. So, ideally, we want the good autumn break towards the middle to end of May. 

Two calf sheds full

We didn’t rear any surplus calves this current milking season. We basically got to our 2 sheds full of calves which was 200 and that was it. I tried to send them to market but no one wanted them, so they ended up going to slaughter. Which is a bit of a shame.

Obviously, there were other farmers who were thinking along the same lines and hobby farmers as well. Because normally you could take them to market and get at least a couple of hundred dollars for them – that wasn’t happening either. 

I don’t know for sure what will happen next milking season, but we will probably run with the same sort of approach. I’ll take the Friesian heifers to market once we get our quota, after all our AI run of 4 weeks is finished.

More frequent farm walks pay off

Six months back, I shared with the readers that I thought the time between walks around our farm was too long and that I would try to lift my game. I am pleased to report that I and my sharefarmer made a very conscious effort with the farm walks particularly over spring. 

We were absolutely diligent, doing those walks every 6 to 7 days to take a closer look at the pastures. This practice worked really well as it actually helped my sharefarmer too. So, we were both on the ball. 

Not much time required for big monetary gain

The proof of more regular walks having a big payoff was that milk production over the whole of last spring was very consistent.

Because of our high stocking rate of nearly 4 cows to the hectare, daily milk production variation is quite noticeable if you don’t get the grazing right for the 12 hours gazing shifts.

As a tangible example, because we were walking over the farm regularly, we quickly worked out that in early summer if we had the paddocks at a 20-day rotation rather than 24 day rotation, there was a significant difference in pasture quality - at 20 days they were still green and growing and at 24 days they had turned yellow and stopped growing due to rust fungus. You think that 3 or 4 days variance per rotation doesn’t make a lot of difference but when you have a pasture problem like rust then it does.

It only took 2 hours a week to do these walks - not a lot of time at all for a big money gain.

Culling empties is the key

We’ve finished our pregnancy testing. Our infertility rate is a little lower than we would have liked, finishing up with a 16% empty after a nine-week mating program. I was hoping it would be more like 12%. However, based on our current milking herd profile of a few old girls and heifers, this is still quite a pleasing percentage rate.

We’ve always taken the approach that if we cull the empties well enough, the herd will get fertile over time – which it has. So long as we keep monitoring that selenium level. We did some blood tests on a sample group of cows – first of all to see where our selenium level were up to and to also make sure there wasn’t anything else that we were missing. Every other trace element was fine. It was only the selenium we need to keep dealing with. Phosphorus was the only other one that was probably border line. It was pleasing to know that there wasn’t something else that would smack us in the face unexpectedly.

Currently we are milking about 685 by getting rid of basically a truck load of choppers, mostly empties and a few with cell counts. So, we probably stick with those numbers for now. Our production is up about 6.5% for this current milking season compared to the last one.

Chicory or ryegrass?

We didn’t actually have the opportunity to put in fodder crops this milking season, nor did we have the need. We did contemplate putting chicory in a couple of sacrifice paddocks we had last winter but August was so kind to us that we sowed them back into rye grass in the spring instead. If it had been a normal August, then it would have been too wet, and we probably would have put in chicory in a month later. We had an opportunity to plant ryegrass a month earlier, so we took it, and it has performed really well.

Rare case of surplus grass

We did 3 cuts of silage on the runoff block, which is an unusual practice most seasons. We also did a little bit of silage on the home block this time, which is quite rare as we are always well stocked on that area which doesn’t usually afford us surplus grass.

Overall, we finished up with 250 rolls of silage (around 90 tonne DM). A couple of paddocks got away from us, so we tossed up whether to keep them for grazing next rotation or to cut them for silage – we chose the latter.

Mud is my biggest enemy

If there is anything we really need to be aware of, then it’s the soil profile. It doesn’t have to be an in your face approach. It’s more around, if you go and put a fence post in at the moment, you don’t have to go very far to find moisture. 

We had a tractor bogged about three weeks ago – in a soaky area! So that’s another quick warning to us to say – hey it’s still pretty wet underneath.

Right now, given the fact that we have a high moisture profile, the likely scenario is that we will have mud at some stage in 6 months. Mud is my biggest enemy. I can deal with the dry, but mud is the one that gives us the biggest grief particularly at our high stocking rate.

I think I can only find 2 paddocks that will need a touch up pasture renovation wise currently. That could change in the next 6 to 8 weeks, but I am not expecting it to change too much. So, we will most likely save a fair amount of money by not having to touch up a few pastures because they’ve had a pretty easy run. 

Like I said earlier, the soil moisture is probably the key thing we need to monitor vigilantly at the moment, keeping a close eye on predicted rainfall forecasts. I think I mentioned before in previous updates, that we’ve got those soil moisture monitor probes on the farm, so we actually have a measurement for how that is going. It’s certainly nowhere near 10 or 20% which is where it normally is when it gets to this time of the year. The top 300 mm have got reasonably dry although we are still green. But once you get past that 300 mm depth, the soil is still quite saturated.

So, keeping an eye on moisture from the sky and in the soil profile is key for us currently!

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No later than Anzac Day

Generally, we have a very consistent rainfall of around 900 mm, but being in a dryland area we are very reliant on when it falls.

Hopefully, this autumn we will have rain by 20 March. The latest time of decent rainfall for a good season that we can get away with is probably Anzac Day. Any later than that we struggle to get a good pasture cover before the winter sets in.

Going back to perennials

We are 90% pasture based with around 10% of summer crops. With our pastures, we are nearly back to 80% of perennial grasses, which is a substantial change for us because from the early two thousand’s (2001 – 2002) through to the teens (2015 – 2017), we really struggled to have perennials like ryegrass to persist. In contrast, over the last 8 to 10 years due to improved perennial varieties and management of them (mostly not grazing them once the weather gets too hot).

Our dairy to beef divide

With the last 4 milking seasons being really good for us, we got to a peak of 580 milking cows (525 to 580 range) this year and we have 130 heifers coming in, so we probably need to do a bit of culling somewhere in the system.

We probably can’t sustain a 580 to 600 cow milking herd (over 700 with our young stock) if we have a very dry year. We have actually got 1500 head of cattle in total (dairy and beef) on the farm at the moment and will probably get up to 1700 this year before we sell some steers to come back to around the 1400 to 1500 mark of total stock numbers.

Hopefully, we won’t have to go too much below 1400 head due to it turning out to be very dry year over the rest of this year.

Currently our steers consist of 150 of the age group '9 -11 month olds' and 140 of the age group '18 – 22 month olds'.

Purchasing next door

Our dairy and beef herd combined is run on a total of around 560 hectares. There is about 410 hectares on the original home block and an out block at Tintaldra of around 60 hectares, 40 kilometres away, which we bought about 6 years ago to run our dairy heifers on.

However, the out block got burnt out in the 2022-23 fires, so we actually purchased 90 hectares up the road from the dairy home block which attaches to our home farm. Although a decision for better management, it was a no brainer as an opportunity of buying land next door doesn’t come around often. Now we’ve got those dairy heifers back at home and we run beef steers at the Tintaldra out block. Essentially, we milk off about 400 hectares with the beef cows and steers crossing over onto this dairy area at times.

We pumped more diesel than water

Up until August last year we hadn’t irrigated since the end summer/early autumn of 2003. Before the prolonged drought in early the 2000’s, we used to be able to pump out of our creek 24 hours a day and run 128 bike shift sprinklers. Then over the time 2001 – 2003 (when it was really dry), we went from 128, to 100 to 80 to 60 and 40 sprinklers, pumping for 4 to 5 hours letting the creek rest and pumping again for 4 to 5 hours but that still resulted in blocking the creek flow. That was how much the creek dropped just on its natural flows really since the start of 1995. Then we actually gave up because we were pumping more diesel than water.

Pivot installed last August

In August last year (2023) we put in a pivot that waters a 30 hectare area. We source the water to run that pivot from a big dam that we’ve always had. We can do about 6 MLs a spin of the pivot – depending on how much water we put on. We have about a 40 ML buffer, then we pump from our old creek site up into the dam when we need to but haven’t had to do that yet. That’s been a huge move forward for us as we can grow a substantial amount of feed over summer and late spring if it’s dry and for an autumn break if required. We are actually quite excited by that.

Survival Mode

If we had that pivot during the fires, we probably would have slowed the fires up and reduced our losses in lost fodder, pastures, and stock. Now that I have made that comment, I am sure the readers are wanting to know why we hadn’t put in the pivot a year earlier. My immediate answer is for around 6 to 12 months before the fires hit, we had been just humming and harring about putting large irrigation guns in and maybe that was why. But I do not really know why to be truthful other than we were not expecting the severity of those fires (estimated monetary loss $1.5 to $2 Million). And also, probably like many we just got into a routine of survival mode through that prolonged drought time in the early 2000’s and the Murray Goulbourn Price crash as we didn’t really have the cash flow. So, overall, the delay in installing the pivot was due to a range of things!

Our current fodder strategy

We try to make a lot of silage - as much pit silage as we can. We aim for a minimum of 1,000 Tonne DM silage, if not more. We tube wrap between 500 and 800 bales - nearly 400 tonnes.

These days we do have a buy in fodder strategy as well. We try to buy 300 kilograms of high protein hay (clover or lucerne) per milking cow every year. We have a person nearby that we buy all our cereal hay off and also, he grows lucernes and clovers. He also does a bit of contract hay making so if he finds something good, he will tell us. Then we buy around 500 kgs of cereal hay per cow every year (probably now up to 700 kg per cow of cereal hay as a lot of it gets fed back to the calves as well and the young stock and heifers).

Ability to adjust and act quickly

With our fodder strategy we aim to be prepared for whatever weather-wise is thrown at us, so that we can adjust it very quickly if we have to according to how the seasons end up turning out.

For instance, when our property got burnt at the extent to which was unexpected for us, we lost a heap of silage (a couple thousand tonne in fact), but we could have lost more. The back story of adjusting as quickly as possible is as follows.

When we were making pit silage and our silage cart had a bearing expire on the November Melbourne Cup weekend in 2022 (nightmare time for breakdown repair) we thought we won’t do all pit silage, so we wrapped the rest of these bales in tube lines. This meant we had a couple of thousand tubed bales lined up everywhere and when the fire came through it burnt nearly all of them. The fire also burnt the tops of our silage pits, but we had an excavator here by 6 am the next morning and we dug the top of all of them out and saved most of our pit silage. A lot of people that had pits never dug out the tops of them and they burnt right through.

Money in the bank

This autumn we will be starting with quite a bit of silage on hand. We have around 1300 Tonne DM of silage covered with dirt – that equates to nearly a year’s worth of silage (if we had to feed just feed it out and nothing else). So, we hope we don’t have to touch that bank of silage for years. If we did get a bad year in the near future, we would not even think of using it, we would buy in a hundred tonne of silage if we needed it just to get the edge on the rotation. This long-term storage silage is money in the bank really!

Making better silage, quicker

Compared to 10 to 12 years ago when my grandad was alive and continually active on the farm and even in my lifetime things have changed for the better when it comes to making our silage. Like we bought a new silage loader wagon during spring of 2020 with which we can pick up 400 DM (800 wet) tonne of silage much quicker. Once upon a time with our old cart, we needed more trucks and 7 people whereas now we only need 2.5 people in effect.

Also, with a rain event now, we can go 'right we’ve got 5 days of good weather' and we get it done. Whereas previously, we’d have to cover the pit, wait for the rain to pass and it would easily take us up to 11 or 12 days (two to up the three times longer).

A few options for a dry autumn

As mentioned earlier, we have plenty of silage on hand as this autumn approaches. This is despite last spring being pretty tough with having 600 milkers that were eating quite a lot of it. But anyway, we have got quite a few levers. If we had a tight season again and the dairy cows are still making good money, we would just sell 100 steers. But then again, we are always under the influence that if we have a steer that’s 480 kg and we wanted to get it to 600 we will feed them cereal hay and grain for a few months to put on as much weight on them as we can. We just wouldn’t sell them for the sake of it. We’ve already got Friesian steers on hand now (as described earlier) they just need to grow out.

Improving our effluent management

As our main dairy country is located in a valley with streams, our dairy effluent is gravity fed back to a dam to get pumped out of. Previously, used to be put through lateral sprinklers, which was effective to a reasonable degree. Then we bought a manurigator and that improved things a bit more.

But I wanted to get better at my effluent management. So, two years ago we bought an effluent vacuum sealed tank, and we transported it to the furthest end of the farm. Our biggest problem currently is that we have to get better at spreading it all the time. We probably need to do it nearly weekly, so we will get someone in specifically to do that.

Less stress with perennials

These next three weeks of summer 2023-24 and the first three weeks of autumn 2024 is less stressful for us because we have got all these perennial grasses that only need to get rain on them to take off. Therefore, it does not matter so much when that is, as we don’t need to be racing around trying to sow each year like we used to. For now, we probably only have to put in about 40 hectares of annual rye grass and that’s it. It is only 10% of our milking grazing area so that can happen anytime as we don’t need to get these annuals in early necessarily to make the most of it.

Prepared for delayed autumn rain

We are quite well prepared for a dry autumn because we have this pivot in, so we have 80 acres of green grass for us when the cows do calve regardless of if it doesn’t rain. So that’s quite pleasing. Plus, we have 40 acres of chicory which we believe is adequate. One of the things we learnt about chicory is if you have too much for the number of cows, you can’t graze it quick enough to get maximum quality, especially in the springtime. One of the other things about our farm is that we can’t silage every paddock because a few of them are on a hill. We have still got to maintain grazing on those paddocks, which we have under control.

Keeping an eye on the weather

We probably are always looking at the weather forecasts without even realising we are. For day to day weather updates, we use YR.

This YR website is normally pretty spot on for us. If it says it is going to rain in the next day or so, then it does. Regarding the rain in the first week of February that was predicted and that we didn’t get, YR did originally predict it for us and then dropped it, which was spot on as it went to the south instead.

I also visit the BOM regularly which keeps me up to date on longer term forecasts and information about the various climate drivers relevant for us.

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Source 1: BoM Long-range weather and climate

Source 2: Agriculture Victoria Fast Break

• Summer rainfall was 18.9% above the 1961-1990 average nationally. In Victoria, total summer rainfall averaged 184.16mm, 55.2% above the average.
   
• A low-pressure system moving across the state resulted in many sites recording their highest December daily rainfall across the 25th and 26th. In January, a second low pressure system on the 8th and 9th brought widespread showers and heavy rainfall, resulting in many sites recording their highest daily rainfall for January.
   
• Both December and January rainfall totals fell at above average for much of the state, with many sites recording both their highest total rainfall on record and highest total rainfall for at least 20 years in both months. Rainfall for February was below to very much below average, save for some areas of the north-east which recorded above average.
   
• Area-averaged summer mean maximum temperature was 0.67 °C above the long-term (1961–1990) average, the warmest since 2021-22. The area-averaged mean minimum temperature was 1.45 °C above the long-term (1961–1990) average, the ninth warmest on record and warmest since 2021-22.
   
• Mean maximum temperatures were close to average across the state but were above the mean average for some areas within the Mallee, South-West and Gippsland districts. Mean minimum temperatures were above to very much above average across the state.
   
• In line with the Bureau’s long-range forecast for summer, we saw above average day and night temperatures across all states. Forecasts for autumn suggest this is likely to continue over the next few months, with predictors suggesting unusually warm temperatures across the country. Warmer sea surface temperatures around Australia are also likely to contribute to the warmer forecast.
   
• For March to May, Australia is likely to very likely to see above median maximum temperatures (60% to greater than 80% chance).
   
• As El Niño weakens and nears its end, conditions are expected to stay neutral in the Pacific Ocean throughout autumn. Many models are also predicting the formation of a La Niña this winter. It’s worth noting that ENSO predictions made in late summer and autumn tend to have lower accuracy than predictions made at other times of the year. Significant global warming of oceans over the past 50 years may impact future ENSO events based on historical patterns. Therefore, ENSO forecasts beyond May should be noted with caution.
   
• The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is currently neutral and many model forecasts expect it to stay that way until April, consistent with its annual cycle. While the atmosphere shows some +IOD behaviour with pressure, cloud and trade winds, the ocean surface is a weak -IOD signal, mainly due to a very warm Sumatran region. The undersea off Sumatra remains cooler and the stronger southeast winds currently in that area might be expected to tame some of the heat out of the region if that upwells.
   
• An assessment of 12 climate models for Victoria suggests planning for anything in terms of rainfall, with a mix of wetter, average and drier forecasts for autumn. Historic model accuracy is mixed for autumn. Warmer temperatures are likely for the next 3 months.
   
• During autumn, keep an eye on pressure patterns and their position which may indicate how autumn will behave. The center of high pressures around Melbourne rather than Adelaide would indicate more stable summer like patterns.

Visit Agriculture Victoria’s The Break Newsletters’ page for regular and latest updates on oceanic and atmospheric climate driver activity, summaries of model predictions for rainfall and temperature forecasts in Victoria. While you are there you might like to subscribe to the monthly break e-newsletter if you are not already receiving it.

Below is a comprehensive list of useful website that cover a range of climate related information on past conditions, climate industry and driver maps, as well as educational products.

Past conditions

Latest seasonal rainfall decile maps

Latest seasonal rainfall total maps

123 Years of Australian rainfall maps: a pdf document of 123 Australian maps showing the decile rank of rainfall for each calendar year from 1900 to 2022.

Latest Victorian soil moisture map

Maximum and minimum temperature deciles and other temperature related maps

113 Years of Australian temperature maps: a pdf document of 113 maps showing the anomaly of mean temperature for each calendar year from 1910 to 2022, compared to the average over the standard reference period of 1961- 1990. 

Climate indices and driver maps

Latest Bureau of Meteorology Climate Driver Update

Latest Bureau of Meteorology ENSO updates

Sea Surface Temperature maps

NINO 3.4 SST Index graphs

Latest 30-Day Moving Southern Oscillation Index graph

Latest Southern Annular Mode graph and 14-day forecasts

Up-to-date versions of mean sea level pressure and anomaly maps

Educational products

Climate View – Your location. Your commodity. Your Climate

The Climate Analogue Tool

Current seasonal assessments of Climate and Ocean Predictions for Victoria

Agriculture Victoria’s eLearn – how to read a sea surface temperature map

Agriculture Victoria’s ‘My rain gauge is busted’ climate podcasts

Local Climate Tool for analysing rainfall and climate driver years

Model accuracy of long–range forecasts

Periods used in climate maps and statistics

Climate drivers in Victoria

Richard Smith and Michele Jolliffe, Dairy Extension Officers, Agriculture Victoria

The installed probes measure adjacent soil moisture at each of these 30 monitoring sites and are best described as capacitance types. They are are 80 centimetres long with eight internal sensors to provide soil water content values and temperature every 10 centimetres. Sites are best assessed individually as the different soil types means they can not be directly compared to others. Also, these probes are useful in showing total soil moisture levels from estimated plant available water and relative movement/use of moisture down the profile.

A monthly analysis of all monitoring sites is produced by Agriculture Victoria as an e-newsletter, found here. 

A live interactive Soil Moisture Monitoring Dashboard can be found here.

In this article, we feature the Jancourt, Longwarry and Yarram site (marked with a green tick) through a detailed update on the key recent soil moisture level observations from summer as well as relevant future insights for this autumn.

Map image of front page of the soil moisture monitoring dashboard.

Soil Type: Brown Dermosol 
Soil Texture: Clay Loam 

Entering summer, the site was well above field capacity, with rainfall totals across December and January above average. The site stayed saturated into late January when drawdown started, falling to 69% in February. In the first week of March sitting at 66%.

The rain meant that pastures remained green though most of summer, with producers aiming to take advantage with silage, due to good regrowth. However, the rain did prolong the ability to cut quality silage, with some areas missing windows due to wet conditions.

As shown by the moisture speedo graph below the Longwarry site is typical of west Gippsland with green pasture still on offer. With the current moisture above the same point as last year, this may provide some assistance to producers getting set for autumn.

However, the BOM is forecasting maximum temperatures are expected to be above median, with above median minimum temperatures expected with a likelihood of 88%. Currently BOM forecast model is for neither above or below-median rainfall. For current and overall soil moisture (10 to 80 centimetres) data for the Longwarry chicory probe site, as shown below, visit here.

Moisture Speedo for chicory mix pasture probe (4 March 2024).

Soil Type: Grey Dermosol 
Soil Texture: Clay Loam 

Entering summer, soil moisture was sitting at 31%, with total summer rainfall totalling 89.2mm of which  54.8mm fell in December and 32.6mm falling in January. These rain events did little to arrest the drying trend which continued during this time. As summer progressed hay and silage production stopped due to the drying out of pastures, with dryland forage crops showing signs of moisture stress with growth stalling. There were also reports of silage pits being opened to meet feed needs.

For the site the BOM is predicting a below median rainfall for the site with a chance of above 60% with past accuracy for rainfall high.

For current and overall, soil moisture data for the Jancourt pasture site in Agriculture Victoria’s network of soil moisture monitoring probes, visit here.

Moisture Speedo for Jancourt perennial pasture probe (4 March 2024).

Soil Type: Brown Sodosol 
Soil Texture: Clay Loam 

Jack River was typical of those in South Gippsland, with the site entering summer with a saturated soil profile. The site stayed saturated into late January when drawdown started, falling to 64% in February. The storms in this region in mid-February did raise it to full soil capacity. In recent weeks this has fallen to enter March sitting at below 50%.

The rain meant that pastures remained green though most of summer, with producers aiming to take advantage with silage, due to good regrowth. However, the rain did prolong the ability to cut quality silage, with some areas missing windows due to wet conditions. Oat crops which were sown in December were cut for hay in late February. The drying conditions did lead to good protein hays in particular lucerne, due to the warm tempertures.

As shown by the moisture speedo graph below the Longwarry site is typical of west Gippsland with green pasture still on offer. With the current moisture above the same point as last year, this may provide some assistance to producers getting set for autumn. However, the BOM is forecasting maximum temperatures are expected to be above median, with above median minimum temperatures expected with a likelihood of 88%. Currently BOM forecast model is for neither above or below-median rainfall.

For current and overall, soil moisture data for the Yarram pasture site in Agriculutre Victoria’s network of soil moisture monitoring probes, visit here.

Moisture Speedo for Yarram pasture probe (4 March 2024).

The Milking the Weather newsletter provides seasonal and climate risk information for the dairy industry, 4 times per year (summer, autumn, winter and spring).

Information includes regional round ups for the previous season, seasonal climate outlook summaries, strategies on managing the season ahead and case studies on farmers managing climate risk successfully on their farms.

To subscribe to the Milking the Weather e-newsletter, click here.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia licence. You are free to re-use the work under that licence, on the condition that you credit author. To view a copy of this licence, visit creative commons.

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