How farmers are faring as drought declared in Northland, Waikato, Marlborough and Taranaki

Because of the cool climate in Tihoi, Ruby Mulinder and Sean Nixon's farm urgently needs rain before temperatures drop further and halts any chance of grass growing. Photo / RNZ / Alexa Cook

By Alexa Cook of RNZ

The clock is ticking for drought-stricken farmers in the Central North Island who fear if they don’t get rain soon, before temperatures drop further, then no grass will grow before winter bites.

A drought has been declared in the Northland, Waikato, Horizons, Marlborough-Tasman, and Taranaki regions.

With no rain on the horizon, farmers worry a grim winter is ahead and are preparing for the worst by spending thousands on extra feed for their animals and sending stock away to greener pastures to give their paddocks a respite.

To see how farmers are faring, I began my rural road trip in Tihoi on the western side of Lake Taupō.

It’s a small farming community where a cold wind from the mountains and lake is blowing across the dusty brown landscape, bringing the temperature down and shrinking the warmer weather window in which farms can grow grass before winter hits.

It’s an early start at Ruby Mulinder and Sean Nixon’s sheep dairy farm, with 730 ewes to milk before breakfast.

Their health is vital for the business, as the milk is exported to China. Despite the ongoing drought, production is only down 5% because they’ve invested in extra feed.

“Keeping the ewes milking well has come at a big cost, we’ve had to buy in a lot of feed to do it and obviously that hurts our bottom line,” he said.

The area has had just half of its usual rainfall, there’s been no decent rain since December and with a rapidly cooling Autumn, they’re constantly managing the feed situation.

“If we don’t start getting some rain soon to turn things around, we’ll be going into winter in a pretty grim-looking position,” Sean said.

His wife agreed, most of their conversations now revolve around the drought and how to get their animals through it in the best possible shape without having to cull any of the main herd.

“It’s getting scary now,” Ruby said.

“We should have paddocks being locked up so we are growing grass for winter, but at the moment there’s not much around really.

“We could have a pretty hard winter here, like a really hard winter.”

Ruby and Sean have had to buy in about $20,000 of extra baleage for their stock. Photo / RNZ / Alexa Cook

They farm 1100 sheep and 55 cattle and usually can make about 300 bales of silage.

However, the dry conditions started back in spring so they’ve only managed to grow enough grass for 60 bales of hay.

It’s left them well short and so far they’ve had to buy in about $20,000 of extra feed.

“The longer this goes on, the more daunting this gets,” she said.

“We are at the later part of March now and our growing season is quite short in Tihoi...when it shuts up shop we really don’t grow anything.

“Everyone sits with bated breath and hopes it’s going to break soon - but we don’t just need 10ml, we need 50ml, then another 20ml, then another 20ml.”

Ruby grinned as she recognised how demanding that sounds.

“We’re a bit fussy us farmers, we want quite regular warm rain now, and we need it quickly.

“But you can’t do anything about it - Mother Nature, she’s a tough woman,” she laughed.

Ruby Mulinder and Sean Nixon are farming in Tihoi with their kids, Conor and Flynn. Photo / RNZ / Alexa Cook

The local contractor has only cut half the amount of baleage in the district that he usually would, and Ruby said it means local feed sources won’t last as long.

But luckily they made tough decisions early on, such as selling lambs rather than keeping them to fatten up and sell for a higher price later.

“We’re very fortunate that parts of the east coast, Hawke’s Bay and Wairarapa have had rain so that’s where all our store lambs have gone,” Sean said.

“It’s really good there was somewhere with feed they could go.”

“This is the one thing about a drought, you hope another area is growing a lot of feed because it means we can offload stock,” Ruby said.

“The worst thing we can have is the whole North Island in a really bad position, and at the end of the day, everyone takes their turn at a bad season - this is ours.”

A lingering drought can impact every aspect of the sheep milking operation as the ewes need good feed to conceive and grow good lambs, and then produce decent milk solids.

Sean said they'll be drying the milking herd off at the end of March, but still need plenty of good feed to ensure lambing goes well. Photo / RNZ / Alexa Cook

“You do start to worry about what it could do for next season,” Sean said.

“If we can’t feed the animals as well over winter, then potentially that doesn’t set them up as well to produce as well next season.

“There could definitely be flow-on effects from where we are at right now.”

Every day they’re recalculating feed budgets.

“If we bugger it up now and then the ewes don’t lamb down in good condition in the spring, that has a huge roll-on effect for how big they wean their lambs and how they milk,” Ruby explains.

“That’s all big bottom line stuff.”

‘We live and die by what falls out of the sky’

Tihoi dairy farmer Richard Webber is feeding palm kernel to keep condition on his cows, but says milk production has dropped 10% due to the drought. Photo / RNZ / Alexa Cook

About 15 minutes away lives dairy farmer Richard Webber and his family.

He says his milk production is down 10% on what they’d forecast.

“We’d normally be milking 800 cows this time of year, but we’re only milking 600.

“If we don’t get rain in the next week we’ll be down to 400.

“We either increase supply or decrease demand for feed - so drying cows off is a bob each way.

“Effectively a milking cow eats twice as much as a dry cow, so if we stop her making milk we can feed her less and she’ll still be fat for calving... That’s the plan.

“It’s on a knife edge at the moment, this season.

“It’s like the elephant in the room, the kids have grown up understanding that we live and die by what falls out of the sky.”

It’s hard not to hope that every cloud might deliver some desperately needed rain.

“The first challenge is the mental challenge - just staying up for the fight, so it’s really a case of hanging in there, spending the money on the feed to get to a point where we feel we can not sacrifice next season,” he said.

Worst drought in 17 years

Tihoi farmer Alex Richardson has lived in the area for 33 years and says this is the worst drought since 2008. Photo / RNZ / Alexa Cook

My last stop in Tihoi was Alex Richardson.

He’s lived and farmed in Tihoi for 33 years and has seen a few droughts in that time.

Alex Richardson's pregnant Hereford cows await their truck to Whitianga where they'll graze greener pastures for six weeks. Photo / RNZ / Alexa Cook

It’s the worst drought he’s seen since 2008, made worse by an infestation of Porina moths eating the grass.

“This year the whole situation was compounded by us having a bad case of Porina, so that’s affected our pastures,” he said.

“It’s a double whammy. I’m thinking it could be quite a tough winter.”

It’s this lack of grass that’s driven him to send 150 of his pregnant cows to Whitianga for six weeks of better grazing, but it’s costing thousands of dollars in trucking fees.

“Cartage is the one that kills it, it’s quite expensive,” Alex said.

He’s hoping that while they’re gone, his paddocks can recover so there’s food when the cows return.

“With a bit of luck, we’ll get some feed if we get some rain... you’ve got to just forget about it and don’t watch and wait.”

- RNZ