ONE district where the recent warm weather has been welcome is at the Mills family property on Kangaroo Island, where their canola crops are looking the "best-ever" for this time of year.
Alan and Janice Mills with their son Michael and his wife Tracy, crop 1330 hectares at Parndana, with 33 per cent under canola, 33pc wheat and 33pc broad beans, and run 800 to 1000 crossbred ewes.
In mid-September last year, they sowed grazing canola for the first time and have been impressed with the trial results. The Pacific Seeds' dual-purpose Graze'n'Grain hybrid canola variety Hyola 971CL was sown after 25 millimetres of timely rain.
"It was pretty dry at the end of last year," Mr Mills said.
"But normally the country is pretty wet in September, so it is a good time of year to be putting a spring crop in.
"We are aiming to get more production off our low, wet areas, with 15-20pc of our paddocks being too wet to be growing canola in an average sort of year.
"Using grazing canola, the time of sowing means the roots can get more established through summer to handle the wet in the following winter, plus its vernalisation requirement means it won't go straight to flower.
"Plus, it gives us an extra feed source. We can graze it two or three times before letting it grow out alongside conventionally-sown canola crops we plant in late April-early May."
Mr Mills said they grazed the crop first in early November and then again in January.
"We could have gone a third graze after the break at Easter but we were a little cautious, being the first year of our trial," he said.
It has since been left to grow out.
"By the time we harvest it in December, it would have been in the ground for about 16 months," Mt Mills said.
The Mills' sowed a conventional-type canola variety next to the grazing canola trial to compare their performance.
"Within two months it had gone to flower, which you don't want, and it has been flowering on and off for a long time, even now, but won't come to anything," Mr Mills said.
"Whereas the grazing canola stayed green and edible to sheep for eight months."
He says it will be interesting to see the final yield results when it is harvested. At this stage, it looks on track and pretty even.
"No-one else grazes canola on the island, so it will be interesting to see how it all pans out," Mr Mills said.
"But it is looking pretty good at the moment."
The Mills' also grow Impala biscuit wheat and some Lincoln bread wheat, and are trialling two new varieties - APW variety Wedgetail and Revenue feed wheat.
"Wedgetail isn't a new variety, but it also isn't grown on the island," Mr Mills said.
"We would like to lift our wheat yields because we think they are not high enough for the amount of rain we get on the island.
"While Revenue is a feed wheat, which we may consider grazing as well.
"We plan to use both in our wetter areas as well, because they also have a vernalisation requirement, so they won't start reproducing until they hit the right type of weather conditions - a cold snap."