January heatwaves have taken some of the shine off this year's crop for Border Rivers cotton producers.
But Ben Warby, from Warby Farming, said it had otherwise been an exceptional season for growing cotton and their first crop of corn, harvested last week, was a raging success.
"The cotton crop is looking good, really good," he said.
"It's been a really good season. For what was meant to be a hot dry year, it's turned out to be beautiful for cotton."
Mr Warby and his wife Belinda operate a 6500ha mixed farm at Yarrowee, east of Mungindi, near the Qld and NSW border.
About 2500ha is used for dryland winter crops of wheat, barley and legumes, and cotton is usually produced on the 860ha set up for irrigation from the nearby Macintyre River.
Mr Warby said he made no changes to the summer cropping program after the Bureau of Meteorology declared a "super El Nino" in September.
"I didn't believe the forecast from our government," he said.
"There were independent weather modellers forecasting a change of season when the IOD started falling, which happened in early November."
Instead, he more than doubled their herd of Angus breeders, buying 450 well-bred Angus cows and calves in November, after several years of waiting patiently for the right time to increase the herd size.
The cows are currently being joined to Te Mania Angus bulls with a weaning program about to start. The weaner steers will be grown out to fit into the feedlot market. Half of the heifers will be retained for the breeding program, with the expectation of having a calf on the ground at 24 months of age.
The Warbys had already decided to introduce corn into the irrigated cropping rotation for the first time, planting 460ha of the gritting variety Pioneer P1837 in late August.
Mr Warby said he wanted to "try something different", that would improve soil structure and fertility - because of corn's larger root mass and ability to increase soil organic matter levels - especially where they had grown consecutive cotton crops.
"Corn also offers a disease break for the soil when growing cotton crops consecutively," he said.
"As we did three years back-to-back cotton with no diseases, we decided to force a rotation as a preventative measure before any pathogens expressed themselves.
"It also gave us the opportunity to implement different agronomic practices, and the chance to use chemicals with different modes of action that would reduce the likelihood of resistance developing."
Harvested last week, the corn yielded a little over 13t/ha on average. Some has been put into on-farm storage and the rest sent to Warwick where it will be milled for processing into food products such as cornflakes, corn chips and cornflour.
This left about 400ha of the irrigated land for planting to the staple cotton varieties Sicot 746B3F and Sicot 748B3F.
Mr Warby said they were chosen because there weren't many other varieties that suited irrigated cotton production in the Border Rivers region.
Preparation for this year's cotton crop at Yarrowee began with mulching in the trash from last year's cotton crop, followed by application of Cotton Sustain and Gran-am.
After incorporating the fertiliser, the beds were worked and formed ready for planting.
Average annual rainfall is about 475mm, but after a solid 85mm in March, just 25mm was recorded from April to October last year.
"It was a very dry winter, with zero effective rainfall right up until November," Mr Warby said.
"About half of our country was pre-watered and then planted into moisture and the rest was watered up after planting."
The cotton seed was sown at 10 seeds per metre on 1m row spacings using a John Deere MaxEmerge planter in the first and second week of October.
The crop received a total of 280 units of nitrogen, two passes with herbicide before canopy closure, and two in-crop insecticide sprays were applied by plane to guard against damage from mirids.
The siphon irrigation system has delivered about 6 megalitres per hectare in six waterings so far.
Mr Warby expects to irrigate twice more before the defoliation phase in mid to late March, with picking likely in early to mid-April.
The crop has just finished flowering and setting the last positions.
Two heatwaves last month, when there was only one day with a maximum temperature less than 35 degrees C and just two days with minimums below 20 degrees C, have cost positions.
Mr Warby said this was not unexpected, especially after five days above 40 degrees C.
"The crop can't hold on to all the positions it puts on so there will normally be a natural shedding of position during times of crop stress, but all in all this year has been kind to us, compared to what was forecast by BoM," he said.
Yields have averaged 12 bales per hectare over the past eight years. Mr Warby has yet to estimate likely yields for this year, but he's confident they will be above average.
"The crop looks pretty sexy," he said.
"It's had a good growing season, so I'm feeling very positive and rather confident for a good yield."
Once harvested, the bales will be sent to Mungindi Ginning.
The Warbys hope they'll also soon be able to start converting the irrigation system to a bankless design.
Mr Warby said he was keen to make the conversion because it offered greater efficiency with irrigation, would require much less labour, and offered the potential for automation in future.
The only hold up has been availability of earthmoving contractors.
"We're patiently waiting," he said.
