Amy and Richard Holcombe with their children.
The seeds of feed budgeting were sown early for Amy Holcombe and she could hardly have known how it would influence her life. Those initial observations came as she watched the impact on the family property after her father Doug Barnard completed a Grazing for Profit course. What she saw was a management process that delivered on every level: it allowed careful protection of ground cover and, at the same time, delivered higher quality pastures and more reliable cash flow expectations. There was no guess work in the number of cattle their family farm could carry; the feed budget made sure there were enough, but not too many.
Funnily enough, that early experience has proved pivotal to her studies, her professional career and her own enterprise. While completing a Bachelor in Applied Science at the University of Queensland at Gatton, Amy found that feed budgeting provided an impetus for part of her course work. It also allowed her to put the research behind the theories of feed budgeting.
After purchasing their property, Kinma, in 2013, feed budgeting was one of the first practices Amy and husband Richard implemented at their cattle backgrounding operation at Moura, where they have up to 1,300 heifers running in the peak of the growing season.
After implementing this practice on their property, Amy then spent many years training others to use feed budgeting, facilitating peer-to-peer workshops on properties to show the benefits of the tool.
Come April each year, Amy and Richard will be driving their own paddocks, and not just looking across them but in them to determine the capacity of those paddocks to feed stock. The budgeting process really has become second nature, and not only does it offer predictability to the business but takes much of the stress out of the operation, Amy says.
She may live and breathe feed budgeting, but that allows Amy time to spend with her three children, as well as her photography business. Amy Holcombe Photography was born when she started recording her own family when they were young as a way of documenting their life and how the family spent time. 'These photos tell the stories of their lives and are their memories to one day look back on,' Amy says. It led to a side gig where Amy's creative side plays out, taking real life photos across rural Queensland.
