ON FARM NATIONAL SNAPSHOT: Lynda and Darcy O’Brien, Basalt, Queensland l SEASONAL CHALLENGES: We caught up with some property owners in The Townsville flood affected us, but not Alberta, Canada while we were away. It made with the devastation witnessed out west. us appreciate what we have at home, from an Area: We received our entire annual rainfall and industry perspective. We have no ferociously 21,000ha we lost about 2% of our herd, mainly young cold weather, we don’t have to feed stock Enterprise: cattle – calves and young weaners – but and help them calve during winter. Breeding, backgrounding our older cattle held up fine. The losses PROGRESS AGAINST LONG‑TERM GOALS: and agistment were a result of having gone through such The electric fencing and cell system is a prolonged dry period and then standing working well now. Our aim was to get it up Lynda O’Brien around in cold, wet conditions for such a and going for this growing season to optimise E: lyndajobrien@gmail. long time. Quite a few families in the westernproduction. We’ll be tightening up the herd com region have been hanging on for so long in the next 12‑month period. This will involve and have invested in maintaining a small engaging consultants to help us decide what herd. To lose them all in one go has been we do with the breeders that are not in calf financially and emotionally devastating. this round. ■ The rainfall was a blessing because we were coming to the end of our pasture reserves. ACTIVITIES OVER THE NEXT We terminated some of our agistment TWO MONTHS: agreements because of the dry, but there was no market for the cattle either, so we > l ook at the business as a whole to look were facing a difficult situation. at creative ways to increase our profit WHAT’S ON OUR PLATE: > realign our herd to the more Things are starting to look a bit brighter. productive breeding model that we We’ve had an eight‑week holiday that was have been discussing five years in the works. We have good > monitor the leucaena and 20ha management on the ground now, which was of mixed stylos and Progardes reassuring while we were away. It’s been a we’ve planted. reset for everybody; an opportunity to extend ourselves and be part of a new experience before schooling gets too intensive. Darcy has been on the farm for 40 years and it’s been 15 years for me. We wanted to come back with a fresh perspective. 13