Solo stud principal prepares for instability by watching markets and preparing for drought

Queensland Country Life caught up with the Oakmore Droughtmaster stud principal from Greenmount following the Droughtmaster National where she sold all six of her bulls to average $6166.

Ms Harms believed the phasing out of live export in the Western Australian sheep industry would lead to live export bans across the country.

She was passionate about the proposed bans to the live export industry having grown up on a wheat and sheep property in WA. Her parents also owned and operated a stock transport business.

Now Ms Harms runs her stud operation mostly on her own while her husband Greg works in Papua New Guinea.

"If we don't all pull together and stop the government from pulling the rug out from live sheep export in WA, we will loose our cattle - they will follow on," she said.

She thought the wider Australian agriculture industry was not doing enough to get behind sheep producers.

"WA farmers went to Canberra last week and they were the only ones there, they're not being backed by the rest of the country and they need to be backed because this will affect everybody - if it's stopped over there it will be stopped here," she said.

Ms Harms warned that low prices currently seen across the industry would be nothing compared to what could happen if the livestock industry had to absorb export sheep and cattle into a flooded market.

"We will see a lot of sheep being shot because there will be no market and those live export cattle will have to be absorbed to the south," she said.

Being a solo principal meant she kept an eye on possible market disruptions and prioritised drought-preparedness.

She runs approximately 110 breeders and replacement heifers on around 283 hectares across three properties.

She and her husband lease two additional blocks in different areas to account for seasonal differences but their numbers are still lower than pre-drought to preserve pastures.

"It's a strategic management decision to have other blocks in different geographical locations, hoping that at least one of them will get rain," she said.

The couple also moved to dryland cropping paddocks for feed, seeing cut hay or foraged sorghum "as an insurance policy".

"As soon as they made the announcement that we could be going into an El Nino we immediately launched into investigating storing cotton seed into the shed and we planted a crop in the hope that through winter we would get rain, which we did," she said.

In addition to storing hay and barley grown on property, the couple started buying feed in "because as we all know, when we go into a drought, the price of everything just skyrockets".