The season that catches people out, and the one where Highland efficiency stops being a free lunch.
Highlands are famously efficient and will hold condition on rough feed that would pull weight off other breeds. That reputation causes trouble in February, when there is no feed at all to be efficient with.
Efficient does not mean self-sufficient. It means they need less than the alternative, which is a different claim entirely, and summer is where the difference shows.
Coastal Victorian pasture comes away in spring, holds through early summer, then stops. By late January the grass that is standing has gone to seed and dropped in quality even where there is plenty of it — dry standing feed can look adequate and carry very little energy or protein.
The gap usually runs from somewhere in January through to the autumn break, and the autumn break is not a date you can count on. Some years it comes in March. Some years it is May. Plan for the long version and be pleasantly surprised.
On a block with limited rotation the gap arrives earlier and bites harder, because there is nowhere to shift to and nothing has had a chance to rest.
Budget for it, and buy it early.
The arithmetic is not complicated. A cow eats roughly two to two and a half per cent of her body weight in dry matter a day. A Highland cow at around 450–500kg is therefore eating in the order of ten to twelve kilograms of dry matter daily, more if she is lactating. Over a three-month feed gap that is around a tonne per head — somewhere in the range of two to four round bales depending on their size and quality.
Run that number for your own stock and your own likely gap, add a margin, and buy in spring or early summer while hay is coming off paddocks locally. Buying hay in January, in a dry year, alongside everyone else who did not plan, is the expensive way to do it. The price difference between forward buying and panic buying in a bad season is substantial.
Store it under cover and off the ground. Hay that has sat in the weather loses quality quickly and mouldy hay is not worth feeding.
Consumption climbs sharply in heat. Cattle drink far more on a 35-degree day than a 15-degree one, and lactating cows more again — figures in the general literature range from around 40 litres a day in mild weather up to 100 litres or more per head in real heat. Whatever your system supplies in winter, it needs to supply several times that in February.
Check troughs daily through summer, not weekly. A stuck float or a blocked line in a heatwave becomes a serious welfare situation inside a day, and cattle will go through a trough faster than you expect.
Things worth doing before the hot weather:
A Highland in full coat is carrying insulation designed for a Scottish winter. They cope with Australian summers better than people expect, but they need shade and they will use it through the middle of the day.
Trees are best. Where there are none, anything that throws shade helps. Expect them to do most of their grazing early and late and to stand about between, which is normal and not a sign of anything wrong.
Keep a loose mineral or lick available through summer. Dry standing feed is low in a number of things, and intake of minerals tends to rise when pasture quality falls.
What your animals actually need depends on your soil, and southern Victorian country varies. Rather than guessing from a label, ask your vet or your state department what is typically short in your district, and consider a soil or blood test if you are seeing problems you cannot explain.
Learn to feel rather than look. This is the habit that separates people who get through a dry summer well from people who get a fright in March.
Run your hand firmly over the ribs, the spine, the hip bones and the tail head, once a month, on the same animals. You are assessing cover over bone. Write down what you find, because memory is generous and will tell you they look the same as last time.
A Highland in full coat can hide condition loss completely, which is precisely why people miss it. By the time a cow looks poor she has been going backwards for weeks, and pulling condition back onto a cow in late summer is far harder and more expensive than holding it in the first place.
Prioritise the animals with the least in reserve: cows with calves at foot, first-calf heifers, and anything old. They come off first and they recover slowest.