- Title: Drought kills livestock, causes stress among Australian farmers
- Date: 29th August 2018
- Summary: (MUTE) TAMWORTH, AUSTRALIA (FILE - 2018) (REUTERS) AERIAL OF CATTLE WALKING TOWARDS VEHICLE AERIAL OF FIELD WITH CIRCULAR PLOUGH PATTERNS IN SOIL
- Embargoed: 12th September 2018 03:07
- Keywords: drought Australia cattle sheep Tamworth Armidale
- Location: TAMWORTH, ARMIDALE, AUSTRALIA
- City: TAMWORTH, ARMIDALE, AUSTRALIA
- Country: Australia
- Topics: Droughts,Disaster/Accidents
- Reuters ID: LVA0028V8NRRB
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: On 'Te-Angie', 65 kilometres north-east of Armidale in New South Wales (NSW), Australian farmer Richard Ogilive looks grim as he pushes a bale of hay off his truck to hand feed his Hereford cattle amid a drought.
Ogilive expects to see a loss of about $146,000 (A$200,000) in 2018 due to cattle that are lost to the severe drought sweeping through Australia's east. He has already had to shoot cattle that are too weak to get up, halving the number of cows in his paddock from 1200 to 600.
The situation is taking a toll on his personal life.
"I don't particularly like her (his partner) coming out the paddock to help me to drag cattle out of the dams or to shoot cattle that are too weak to get up. Men are a little bit more stoic than women and she'd get pretty upset and then the fact that she gets upset then would most probably emotionally upset me more, than the fact that I've had to shoot some cows," said Ogilive.
His donated hay from family in South Australia is expected to last another six weeks. After that, if it doesn't rain, Ogilive isn't sure what will happen next, but he is trying to focus on the positive and not dwell on the consequences of a shrinking feed supply.
"By having some show cattle, which gets us off the farm and we can go and get away from it for a couple of days, while the rest of the family soldier on and they have a couple of days off when we come back," he said.
Farmers have described this season as the worst drought they have ever seen.
In better times, the dam on Kevin Tongue's property in Tamworth in NSW, is three metres deep - it's now been empty for three months decimating his wheat and barley crop.
All three hundred breeding cows and 1300 sheep have to be hand fed by Tongue, his wife and two sons, with grain and fodder bought and transported from other parts of the country.
"It's been a huge financial effect on everyone. Not just buying hay and things like that, but you know, we've got no winter crop and that's probably a third of our income that we won't have," Tongue said.
Australia's drought is so severe that Glencore Agriculture is forecasting a wheat crop of just 2.4 million tonnes in NSW state, compared to an average annual yield of 7.4 million tonnes. All of NSW, the country's most populous state that accounts for a quarter of Australia's agricultural output by value, is officially in drought, according to the state government.
The federal government on Aug. 19 pledged a $1.32-billion (A$1.8 billion) increase in funding for drought-afflicted farmers, in addition to the A$576 million previously announced. But with vast tracts of Australia's grazing and crop land blighted by record-low rainfall and consecutive seasons of above-average temperatures, farmers like Ogilive and Tongue can only pin their hopes on hints of rain from distant clouds to lift their despair. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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