Donated fodder makes the long journey to flood affected Macleay farmers

The fodder, some of which is from as far as Victoria, was delivered to the Mid North Coast by volunteers from Need for Feed Disaster Relief and has been distributed to around 80 local farmers impacted by the recent flood.

St Paul's College Agriculture teacher Graham Bramley has been coordinating the distribution to local farmers and said the response from farmers has been overwhelmingly positive.

"It's been pretty successful. We have tried to organise fodder for as many farmers as we can," he said.

"We shifted 11 loads on Sunday with the help of a number of volunteers and managed to get the fodder to those who need it."

All of the donated fodder was delivered to Weismantel Heavy Haulage in South Kempsey and has helped feed 4800 beef cattle and 1600 dairy cows.

"I do want to thank the Weismantel family who let us use their facilities for the hay distribution and the O'Donnell family who lent us a tractor to shift bales," Graham said.

"The response from the farmers has been really positive and they are all very thankful for the fodder. It's been a very intense experience organising everything, but it worked well.

"We had five trucks come from the Hunter Valley on Saturday with silage and square bales that went directly to our dairy farmers, while 220 round bales were delivered on Sunday.

"We would really like to thank all of the farmers for being so patient and for the assistance of all of the volunteers who helped out," Graham said.

Need for Feed Disaster Relief are planning another hay run to the Mid North Coast over the Anzac weekend on April 24 and 25.

"We have made a good start before and over Easter but much more needs to be done. Hundreds of farming families are affected," a post on the Need for Feed Facebook page states.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: