KI fires: Livestock to go as rebuild takes priority

In that catastrophic fire, Ryan and Leah Couchman lost their house, some sheds, including their shearing shed, 400 rolls of hay, more than 300 hectares of grazing land, 800 sheep and countless treasured possessions.

"We had just got the property going the way we wanted, making some money and now we have to start all over again," he said.

Thankfully, their 85-breeder cattle herd did survive, along with 500 sheep.

Mr Couchman plans to agist the sheep on the mainland, but hoped to retain the cattle on their farm west of Parndana.

"If we can get enough hay, I would prefer to keep my cows here, get through the next few months and hopefully our pastures will start turning around," he said.

"But every day there is different scenarios to weigh up, so we won't buy more hay until we know more.

"If we can't secure feed, we will probably look to agist them too, as it might be easier to just pay someone to look after them while we get the rest of our life in order."

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He said they were now focusing on fencing, after losing most on the property.

"We may change some of the fencelines, but it will depend on how much we can get done because of a labour and post shortage," he said.

They were also waiting on their insurance pay-out to start rebuilding their home.

"We have only just got into emergency accommodation, as the ongoing fires had kept assessors at bay," he said.

"Thankfully we have some generous local holiday house owners. We are about to go into a rental close to Parndana, which means the kids can go back to school relatively easily and it's not too far from the farm.

"But I can't wait to see our house and shed disappear so we don't have to look at it anymore."

He said the local community had been awesome with donations.

"I got out with just the clothes I was wearing, but within two days, we had donations coming in from everywhere," he said.

"Donated generators were the biggest thing."