Corkhill Ag Services agronomist, Tom Corkhill, said the rainfall, despite being sporadic, had been fantastic.

“From the Friday rain event we had a range of eight to 24mls across the district, with good averages of 16 to 18mls, followed by beautiful weather over the weekend,” he said.

“So the countryside here is growing, crops and pastures are growing well, the grazing crops are growing well, we’ve just been lucky enough to get enough little bits of rain to keep us ticking.

“We do need a really good decent fall of rain over the winter period so we can be coming into spring with a full wet profile, but at this point in time we can be think ourselves lucky that we are getting what we are getting,” he said.

Mr Corkhill said the district’s livestock had been doing well and if the region received decent rainfall over winter producers would scrape through.

“A lot of farmers are feeding livestock and will have to continue to do that regardless,” he said.

“The current weather with the little bit of moisture and wind has been Ok, this coming weekend might test a few lambs. All in all the district is holding up Ok in comparison to further north and west of us.

“Because of the commodity prices of meat and wool people have tried to keep there stock numbers up, in some cases people have been caught and probably overstocked a fraction because we didn’t get that early autumn break.

“But the beauty is if you are offloading, they are worth the money. The money for lamb and even mutton is fantastic so we’re in a good environment if your numbers are a bit high and you have to sell off, well you’re going to get rewarded,” he said.

Mr Corkhill said producers should be prepared to feed stock throughout winter and that with current market prices for wool and meat they were worth feeding through to the other side of winter.