Even after a lifetime grazing cattle at the family’s property near Calliope, central Queensland, it wasn’t until the severity of the last big drought in 2019, and the financial and environmental damage it caused, that the importance of clear thinking really hit home.
Mr Wilson, who runs Calliope Cattle Company, admits emotion-based decisions played far too big a role in the management of the family’s 13,000-head operation during previous dry periods.
“A cattle producer trying to be logical is sometimes difficult,” he said.
“It’s a hard thing to change … my thought pattern is always protect, protect, protect that breeding entity and don’t undersell the background entity.”
But when Mr Wilson held on too long during the last drought, the situation reached a crisis point, the likes of which he had not encountered before.
The company was taking heavy losses feeding 280kg weaners on custom feed to try to find an exit market.
Having learnt the hard way, Mr Wilson said the business now had a better strategy in place in preparation for the next dry period.
Mr Wilson aims to take better advantage of good seasonal conditions by increasing the stocking rate by up to 20 per cent above his average carrying capacity, giving him a buffer that he can remove at the first sign of drier times ahead, with larger scale destocking to follow if drought eventuates.
“It’s an easier decision to sacrifice because the hard part when you go into the dry periods is the decision,” he said.
“So we’ve already got identified animals to sacrifice coming into the next dry period, whenever that might be.
“Because our rainfall varies, our actual expectation can’t be static. It’s got to vary with it. And that’s why our stocking density has got to be nimble enough to be able to take the ebbs and flows.”
He said like many others in the industry, he had often found it difficult to pull away from the management styles of the past.
“You have to treat it like a business rather than a family heritage piece,” he said.
He said decisions made too late could be extremely costly.
“When you ring the processor in November to get a kill space the next week, but they can’t give you one for three months — that’s where the disasters start unfolding,” he said.
“But if you make an exit strategy for 50 per cent of the cows in June after they preg-test empty, then you can find the value.”
Mr Wilson’s insights have been incorporated into a new research project called Decide and Thrive, which aims to assist producers to make informed decisions about selection and culling during drought.
The project, being delivered by the University of New England, CQUniversity and CSIRO through funding from the Federal Government’s Future Drought Fund, began by gaining an understanding of producers’ current decision-making and management strategies.
More than 30 in-depth interviews were carried out with producers and advisors to assist technology developers and farm consultants in how best to offer support to industry to improve drought management strategies.
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