While the city’s gardeners might be complaining about a lack of rain, Bowyer & Livermore stock agent Todd Clements said it is a lot worse for farmers.

“It’s just been incredibly dry this year, we’ve had no good rain for 12 months,” he said.

“We had no rain in autumn, winter and spring last year.”

During March, 20,000 head of cattle were sold at the Central Tablelands Livestock Exchange (CTLX) in Carcoar, more than double the average monthly sales data.

Mr Clements said on an average week around 2000 head of cattle are brought to CTLX for sale, but lately that has doubled with up to 4000 animals weekly.

“It’s very tough and most farmers are unfortunately talking about the ’82 drought and there’s no forecast of rain,” he said.

“It [the 1982 drought] was pretty blood awful.”

And with more head of cattle up for sale the price has plummeted, with Mr Clements confirming it had “dropped dramatically”. 

He said farmers could always purchase feed for their stock, but an ongoing lack of rain had forced many to sell.

“It’s pretty tough, they’re all down in the dumps at the moment,” he said.

“It’s [the drought] from Bathurst to Scone and we’ve got the worst hit in the country.”

And, with the region already experiencing its first frost this season, Mr Clements said the outlook for any growth is bleak.

“If it does rain we’re not going to get any growth until September,” he said.

“A few crops will grow, but the pasture won’t grow.”

Despite the drop in cattle prices, the price for sheep remained strong.

“If you’re a sheep farmer you’re actually making money,” Mr Clements said.

Rainfall data on the Bureau of Meteorology’s (BOM) website from June 2017 to March revealed a lack of rain across large parts of NSW.

The site states there was a “serious to severe deficiencies for the nine-month period” across the Central Tablelands.

BOM data shows there was a 55 per cent chance of an above average rainfall for the region from April to June.

So far this year only.99 millimetres of rain has fallen in Orange, this is down on the long-term average of 255.6mm. At this time last year 157.6mm of rain had fallen.