Mice outbreak a concern for Mann family at Eradu

So far this season has delivered above average rainfall for much of WA and crops in the Mid West have enjoyed the good drink.

But as it often goes in farming, where one issue subsides, another arises and now Mid West farmers are most concerned about mice nibbling away at their beautiful crops.

The Mann family runs a 680 arable hectare farm and has a contract spraying business, along with share farming further south.

They started farming in their own right in 2015, when they moved to the farm, known as Midoxgate, which they lease from Ms Mann's parents.

The story of how the couple met would be familiar with many farmers - a foreign boy meets a girl from a farm.

Mr Mann came to Australia in 2004 on a working holiday, having grown up in agriculture as his grandfather was a farmer and had always worked in the industry.

Ms Mann was working as an agronomist at Merredin, but came up to see her parents one weekend and at the local pub, met a man who was working on a farm that neighboured her parents.

Now they have three sons, twins Callum and James, 11, and George, 8, and love the lifestyle that farming offers.

At the home farm, this season's crop included 350ha of Sceptre wheat, 44ha of Bannister oats, 126ha of Barlock lupins and 150ha of Bonito canola.

In mid-August the farm had already received its annual average rainfall, of about 325 millimetres.

The year has already far exceeded the previous two years, with 277mm of rain received in 2020 and 195mm for 2019.

"For us to be sitting at 325mm now is just amazing," Ms Mann said.

"Now we just need a soft finish - no 30 degree or higher days, which sometimes happens in September.

"It's the heat up here that normally wrecks things for us.

"The crops have been very lucky, they've had rain all year and haven't had to go looking for it so they're pretty soft.

"It's not a bad thing to have a bit of a dry spell at the start, as it makes the crops go looking for moisture and gives them a bit more resilience, but they haven't had that this season."

With crops looking great, the couple's key concern right now is mice.

Mr Mann said the mice have been present since summer and he noticed them most further north around Yuna when he was contract spraying.

"I would see them easily in the dark running along the ground," Mr Mann said.

"There were some paddocks with pockets that were really bad, like eight or 10 mice in a run and then there were other paddocks where you wouldn't see any, maybe two or three mice for the whole night."

Now the mice have increased on their own property, with "pockets of pretty reasonable damage".

"They are everywhere and are worse in some spots than others," he said.

"You can hop out of the sprayer and not have found any damage but you can't bait for pockets."

The mice have been concentrating on canola, nibbling the pods of the plant and then empty pods can be found on the ground, often near mouse holes.

"They seem to have favourite plants within paddocks," he said.

At this stage Mr Mann has noticed mice starting to get to lupins and while they are in wheat paddocks, they haven't yet caused any damage to wheat plants.

"When the wheat comes out into its head, they'll get into that, but there's not any sign of damage in the wheat at this stage that I've seen, but we know the mice are there because the dog can find them in the wheat," he said.

"Once the heads come out and it starts making grain, they'll climb up the plant, nip the heads off and pull them apart on the ground."

Now that the plants are well-established, damage from seeding has also become apparent.

"It's not so noticeable in the lupins, but in the canola, there's old damage from seeding time, so I'd find a patch where there's no plants and then the middle of that patch there would be an old mouse hole, so you could see the mice weren't active there anymore," Mr Mann said.

"But they must have been active at seeding time and found the seeds in that area around the hole, so that's why there were no plants in that patch."

On top of the damage to crops, trying to access baits has been another issue.

"There's already mice problems over east, so trying to get hold of products has been difficult," Ms Mann said.

"(Businesses) are manufacturing around the clock.

"We are waiting for a couple of suppliers to get back to us and once it gets sent to WA it's all on allocation and you only get some of your allocation because it's split.

"So in between trying to get the plane and product, it's been challenging and frustrating."

The consistent rainfall has also made it difficult to get onto paddocks for spraying, which has impacted the family's farm, but also its spraying business.

Mr Mann said weed and disease control was going "pretty good, we've just been getting things in the nick of time".

"With our farming operation being so small, we do a lot of contracting which kind of punches a bit of a hole in the timing of things more than anything," he said

"Just the fact that spraying couldn't happen much this season has been hard - we were only managing to spray for two or three days a week for about five to six weeks - it has been just terrible spraying conditions."

Ms Mann said, "Liam's been a bit like Jekyll and Hyde because as a farmer the rain has been amazing and we'd never knock it, but as a spraying contractor it's been really challenging".

"So it depends on how much pressure he's under from the spraying.

"It's a good problem to have I guess, but it's frustrating on the contracting side and it's the same with all the farmers who are trying to get on their own properties.

"And getting hold of Flexi-N has been an issue, I think people who use urea were having dramas, and now it's the same with the mice issue - we're having trouble getting hold of baits -this year is all about supply."

Including hay in this year's program was a first for the family, as they have some grey clay country which can be problematic.

"Apparently the roots of oat plants are meant to be quite good for soils, so we thought we'd give it a crack," Mr Mann said.

"Canola doesn't particularly like that country in a normal year, but that said this year is not a normal year.

"It was wheat for a long time so we wanted to try something different and we don't really have enough land to do any fallow."