Graeme Davis.

Farming to the east of Goondiwindi, farm manger Graeme Davis, working for Michael and Sonia Claridge, planted a drought-reduced area this season of 405 hectares to double skip cotton (equating to about 202 green hectares).

And considering the risk at planting, the double-skip has transformed into a wise move.

While they have the potential to plant 730ha, at planting they managed this year’s crop thanks to some handy late winter rain in 2007.

In a year that was otherwise dry, the August rain allowed them to pick up 270 megalitres of high flow water from the Dumaresq River ahead of planting.

With the farm infrastructure dry for a long period prior to this, they opted to store the water immediately in the soil rather than move it around the farm and lose most of it wetting up infrastructure.

Another field had some remaining moisture from a late irrigation on the crop of the 2005/2006 season, and had been laying fallow since.

Thus, a small rain event later on allowed them to plant the bulk of the crop on these fields on October 15.

Since then, the bulk of the crop has had two irrigations, along with a decent rain event in early March which delivered about 100mm.

All up, Mr Davis says he is happy with how it is looking and hopes to see the picker moving later this month (April).

“We’re very happy with the crop. It has had a few issues with mirids at the beginning and we probably sprayed three or four times to control them,” he said.

“Later on we’ve had a new problem with cotton stainers, and part of that problem has been that not many people know much about them.”

The stainers hit hardest on a 30 hectare section of crop that received just one irrigation and is more advanced than the rest of the farm.

As the bolls began opening last month, agronomist Brendan Griffith, Griffiths Consulting, noticed that the damage was reasonably significant.

With counts of 3-5 per metre in the remaining crop, they opted for an aerial insecticide control.

While they were reluctant to use heavier chemicals late in the season, Mr Davis says it was a calculated risk to avoid significant boll damage. Likewise, they opted to use the plane rather than the ground rig to avoid crop damage.

While it remains too early to know for sure, the early boll counts indicate the potential for a yield of 5.5 bales/ha (which would be 11b/ha solid).

“In the past we have had good yields from double skip, but at the moment we are still unsure what the damage will be from the stainers.”

While they grew no cotton last season, the season prior they averaged about 10.4b/ha thanks to some lucky storm events.

They planted most of the farm to double skip (730ha) and with 900ML and two rain events managed to produce about 5000 bales.

Mr Davis said skip was something that required some extra work, but it was a successful tool at the farm.