Harvest headaches as wet spring weather impacts farmers

District farmers are having one of their worst seasons for cutting silage.

And unless there’s an easing of the already much wetter than normal spring conditions, the prospects for the summer hay harvest are also looking bleak.

Local agriculture contractors say it has been one of the worst silage seasons for many years.

Contractor Jeromy White of Drouin whose customers are across most parts of Baw Baw Shire and the fringes of some adjoining shires said the “terrible” season would also lead to a drop in the quality of silage cut.

“We can’t get onto paddocks because they don’t get a chance to dry”.

As soon as we get a couple of dry days the rain returns, Mr White said.

In some of the low country it will be a struggle to get silage off.

Duncan McNeil of McNeil Contracting at Warragul, who has been in the business almost 40 years, said it was the “wettest and most difficult” season for silage, and probably for hay, he’s encountered.

He said he’d cut only about half the silage of a normal year and fears there won’t be the quality in the grass for a good hay harvest.

Ground is water-logged and many paddocks still have surface water lying on them, Mr McNeil stated.

Trafalgar’s Steve Deppeler of Depps Contracting paints a similar picture.

The season has been pushed back a long time, he said, and believes many farmers may choose later silage cuts rather than making hay.

“It has certainly been the wettest for a number of years”.

“We seem to have been working a couple of days and then have four or five days off because of further rain”.

Mr Deppeler said in some parts of the Strzelecki Ranges, where there has been more rain than on the lower areas of the region, the ground is so wet that there hasn’t even been a first cut of silage.

This month has continued the pattern of well above average spring rain across West Gippsland.

Warragul received 279 millimetres of rain in September and October, about 50 millimetres more than the 115-year average.

It was much wetter at Yarragon South, 363 millimetres over the two months.

The Bureau of Meteorology’s longer-range outlook for summer in the region forecasts an “increased chance of unusually high rainfall” with median totals above the median over the December to February period.