Victorian small landholders practicing biosecurity

Lynda Holdsworth:

My name's Lynda Holdsworth, and together with my family, we run Auravale Alpacas and Miniature Donkeys here in the Dandenong Ranges. So, on a day-to-day basis, I would check my alpacas each morning to make sure that they're all well. I also usually need to put feed out from my alpacas, such as hay and maybe some grains, depending on the time of the year. On certain times of the month, we also bring them into our sheds and check them more thoroughly or perform other husbandry duties. Biosecurity is really important for me and it is for the wellbeing of my animals. Because by having good biosecurity measures, I can prevent unwanted parasites and diseases coming onto my property, and that, in the end, ensures my animals stay healthy.

So, we manage external biosecurity risks by ensuring that any visitors onto the property only come into the driveway area. They also are allowed in the shedding, but we do have special solutions to make sure that their feet are clean. We also don't allow any animals onto the property without going through our quarantine procedures. That's our stone yards, our shedding, quarantine, drenching, making sure that the animals, checking them over, that they're, well, they haven't got any signs of disease, and they do stay in this area for a period of time. And then they also go into our quarantine paddock which is separate from the rest of our herd.

Our experience in developing a plan, which was a long time ago now, it was probably 14 years ago when we first developed our biosecurity plan, was really just to be educated, because there was so much information we really didn't understand or didn't know. We were from the suburbs, had no idea about farming really. So it was very important for us to be educated on what the risks were.

To strengthen biosecurity in Victoria in particular, I would like to see alpaca farmers using the Alpaca CheQA program, which is available through the Australian Alpaca Association. It's a very simple program. It's online, it leads you to a lot of information from different areas, Agriculture Victoria being one of them, and it just provides a lot of information that will really help you implement a biosecurity system on your farm.

Speaker 2:

Authorized by the Victorian Government, 1 Treasury Place, Melbourne.

Erica Smith:

My name's Erica. I have a small acreage in Traralgon and I run stud beef, breeding and showing Highland cattle.

Day-to-day is just checking the cattle. It gets a bit busy around show season. So, when the show periods are on, it's a little bit more busy. We have to halter train and prep them for the show, but just generally it's just feeding and making sure everything's okay.

Biosecurity is such an important thing for myself, for my animals, for the industry as a whole. I need to consider the health and wellbeing of my animals. If we ended up with an outbreak of some sort, they would be impacted. The industry, I think, as a whole, would be devastated by something major. And from a personal perspective, our little farm probably wouldn't recover from something like that.

My biggest risk for biosecurity comes from probably a couple of places. Showing brings in an element of risk. We are obviously taking our animals off farm to somewhere else and interacting them with another. So we do as much as we can to minimize exposure there. And then within the farm, it's considering the risks that might come from neighboring properties. My dam is actually filled from neighboring properties. So in the event of when we've got heavy rain and the water's coming in, I need to consider where that's coming from, what the quality's going to do, and how the animals can access it.

So when was I creating my biosecurity plan, Agriculture Victoria have a great website that allows us to have some templates. I use the LPA Integrity Systems template for mine. It's a template you can go through. It prompts you with the questions that you need to know. You don't have to think about the questions yourself, the prompts are there.

If you don't already have a biosecurity plan and you're feeling overwhelmed by it, don't be. Jump on the website, get a template, start small. The smallest step that you can take right now is one step towards a better biosecurity future for everyone

Speaker 2:

Authorized by Victorian Government, 1 Treasury Place, Melbourne.

Natalie Hardy:

I'm Natalie Hardy from Brooklands Free Range Farms in Blampied. We're a regenerative farm, meaning we look after the soils first here.

The most important thing is our soils and with this amazing soil health that we have here, the animal health follows through as well.

My husband, Jono, he feeds the pigs here morning and night and checking the cattle as well regularly, too, especially during the calving times. I'm doing some stuff as well on the farm, helping out. We do our own marketing because we're a paddock-to-plate business, talking to customers, which is really important in educating people, too, with regards to what we do here.

Biosecurity is extremely important to us because we don't want to lose the genetic diversity we have here. If a disease outbreak occurred, it could even occur at a neighbor's property, we would still be within a risk area and, therefore, our whole lifestyle, the farm, all our animals would be gone.

It was a really great experience developing our biosecurity plan. There was so much information on the websites, but the great thing was the actual workshop. There was so much advice there, so much help. The people there were really extremely helpful and I literally walked out of there with a plan.

For our biosecurity precautions on the farm, we have a book, we've got a signing page. We also ask the questions, "Where have you been? Have your boots been on other farms?" We have boot washes, we've got signage. I think asking the questions is the most important thing as well.

One of the things I recommend to new farmers is to look up the Agriculture Victoria website and also there's a new program out, which is an online course called Come Clean, Stay Clean, Go Clean.

Speaker 2:

Authorized by Victorian Government, One Treasury Place, Melbourne.

Rhonda Patton:

My name's Rhonda Patton. My husband and I live in Drouin South, and we have a five-acre farm that has dairy goats on it.

Day-to-day, we milk. Obviously, we milk every day. We've got feeding and kid feeding, obviously. We have animal husbandry chores to do that are required. We're still doing property improvements, as we've only been here two years. And then if we're really lucky and it's a beautiful day, we just sit on the verandah and enjoy it.

The biggest biosecurity concerns for us are the introduction of CAE or JD, drench-resistant worms. Because we're in a high rainfall area, we don't really have a lot of heat to kill the worms. Plus, we also like to keep a high grass cover, which doesn't allow them to be baked on the earth.

The biosecurity steps we take are to try and change our footwear. Generally, normally, we have work boots here, and off-property footwear. We test all of our animals, and if I was to purchase any, they go into a quarantine paddock and we follow the MLA LPA guidelines.

Managing your own pest and disease risks is testing your animals, quarantining, and trying to change your boots. That's the really basic things for us.

Speaker 2:

Authorized by Victorian Government, 1 Treasury Place, Melbourne.