Summer has arrived six to eight weeks early for South Otago farmer Jonathan Bennett.
It has not been the heat that has made his Te Houka farm dry out, rather a lack of rain and persistent wind which has made his sheep and beef farm resemble mid-February conditions in late November.
A "prohibited" fire season has started in Central Otago, with October and November described as exceptionally dry, with just 10mm of rain falling this month alone.
North Otago paddocks were green, but the region's Federated Farmers president, Ross Ewing, said it could do with some rain.
Mr Bennett said little hay and silage was being made in South Otago and some farmers were running short of feed.
His farm, just south of Balclutha, has had just 29mm of rain for November, about half what he recorded in November last year, which he said was also dry.
"You get 4mm or 5mm and it's blown away as soon as it arrives," he said.
Mr Bennett said he was not as short of feed as others, but if conditions worsened he would have to wean his lambs early and look to other measures to preserve feed.
Clutha Agricultural Development Board facilitator Graeme Pringle said many South Otago farmers faced feed shortages due to low soil moisture levels, and his advice was to carefully manage feed in the coming months.
Dairy farmers should use supplementary feed left over from last year to maintain milk flows, but Mr Pringle said using surplus grass to make silage was not a wise use of grass at this stage.
The shorter grass was ideal lamb feed in the immediate future, but if the season remained dry, he said farmers may have to wean earlier than they had expected and quit light-conditioned ewes.
He warned lamb health needed to be monitored as they could be exposed to greater volumes of internal parasites than in a usual year.
Newly-sown crops certainly needed some moisture, Mr Ewing said.
That was also true in North Otago.
Mr Ewing said the region came out of winter and early spring in excellent condition, but persistent wind since had dried the soil, especially dryland paddocks.
Silage and baleage was being made, but conditions were still better than the previous year.
"We are better off at this stage of the year than at the same time last year," he said.