Things might appear bad; he's having to dry off the remainder of his 199 cows on Thursday two months early, he's spent close to $10,000 on pasture silage which added to his own feed reserves will last him about two months, and his farm's bottom line will be down 15 per cent at the end of the year because of the loss in production.
But he says his situation in 2008 was worse and the drought then and the resulting conditions were the worst he had seen in more than 30 years of working his farm.
Still, this summer is not far off - there's been no decent rain since December - and with conditions drier and windier he says more than 100mm of rain is needed to bring soil moisture levels back to normal.
"They say it's supposed to rain this weekend," he says, looking optimistically skyward.
And although 2008 was probably tougher, dairy farmers then were cushioned slightly by a decent payout from Fonterra and stock feed, although at inflated prices, was still available from Northland farmers.
"The problem is this year it is more widespread - there's no one else who is a hell of a lot better off than we are."
Mr Brown has access to water on his farm via several bores that help to feed his stock. "I can't imagine what it would be like to get water trucked in - each of these cows drinks about 80 litres of water a day."
The Government has said it could cost the economy $1 billion.
Northland, South Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty and Hawkes Bay have already been declared drought zones. It is expected that by tomorrow the Tararua, Wairarapa, Manawatu-Rangitikei and Taranaki districts will join that list.
