1-4-11

Sheep

Downtown welcome statue.

They have been having drought but with the recient rain, the rivers are full. Some of the little streams I notice are real muddy so I would imagine that fishing sucks for the moment.

!952 Austin England with fuzzy dice….

Check out this futuristic Catholic Church. WOW, It really surprised me to find out it was Catholic. What are they up to down here?

I went out for a ride and ended up in a little town that had this museum. The folks called to see if someone would open it for me but being Holiday, they said it would open at two but that would have meant I would have had to hang around for three hours and I rode on. It is an amazing bottle house made from old wine bottles. It must be fantastic inside.

I got on a really nice gravel road and just totally enjoy being out in the country and out of ‘Town’. The gravel roads are really nice and if I keep careful control on the Kiwidog, it does OK.

They place the wrapped bales in the field, sometimes along the side and other times right down the middle. I found out that they do this when feeding cattle as they don’t have to go back to the big pile each time, but just go out and pick up one of these silage bales and unroll it right out in the field. That way they don’t have to make a big road mess.

I came upon this group of guys visiting along the side of the road. They were really friendly and were happy to answer a few questions I had. I commented on the strange collection of dogs they were packing and was told that some of them are Border Collies and the others are a New Zealand breed called Huntaway’s.

The Huntaway breed evidently is a driving dog and barks while the Border Collie is quiet and is a heeler and brings the sheep in.  I was invited to come the next day to see the operation they were doing which was weaning the lambs.

The next day I was lost as seems usual and stopped at another sheep shed to get directions on where to get there. I had to ask about this equipment. It is a chute that pretty much grabs the sheep and brings them along so the workers can administer the sheep drench which is medicine that takes care of the parasites in their guts.

They are just sorting off the lambs for the mother ewes here.

The Huntaway’s “walk” on the back of the sheep to get where they are needed. They kept the chute moving when asked to. They are really well trained dogs and as usual with dogs, always ready to work for ya.

This young man is running the little automatic squeeze chute. When I lamb gets in the chute, it squeezes them and weighs them. According to the weight they are directed into three different groups. Those over 38kg are ready to go on the bus and will be butchered or sent off to the freezer as he said. The ones under 34kg are too small and I am not sure what exactly they do with those other than let them grow some more. They might be put back with their moms? The ones that didn’t make the 38kg cut off I would imagine are just grazed a little more but kept separate. I didn’t ask all the right questions as every one was ‘working’ and I tried not to bother them as much as I could.

keeping an eye on things and ready to help if needed.

This is only one batch of sheep and they will be working three days doing this part of the farm. I think they have around 14,000 sheep.

H is writing down the numbers in each group and what their average weight was.

These ewes that have a green spot on their rums are dry ewes and will be sent to the packer. Depending on age, if there is a young one that ended up dry, they would keep it one more year as they had a really bad spring lambing storm and some of the lambs were lost do to the weather. The old ones and the old toothless ones are goners.

They have a nice shearing shed set up and ready to go.

The sharpening wheels for the clippers.

bales of wool.

The wool press.

This is a unit that if the dogs are not doing what they want, they can push a button and the dog gets the message through his collar, NOT to do that anymore.

Everyone was carrying one of these knives and sharping steel.

Some of their cattle. They run I think it was 600+ cows along with the sheep. They looked to me like they were in really good shape.

This is a view of the land in native state. The grass is called tussocks and they like to leave some of it as it gives good protection to the sheep when lambing and in the winter.

here are pastures that they have improved with grass.

This is on the edge of the property and it belongs to Koreans that planted Gum trees, or eucalyptus for pulp wood.

I had never seen this wire that is used to keep the high tensile wires evenly spaced and probably keeps the sheep from being able to push their way through.

Amazing ranch eh? They have done all the improvements on this piece of property. When it was bought back in 1950? It was untouched and had only a perimeter fence around it. Now with all the improved pastures the land has become very productive where before it only supported a few skinny cows and a few sheep.

here is a piece of ground that has just been improved from its native state. They use a heavy disk and planted it to Sweds, which are a sort of turnip that grows on top of the ground. They strip graze them in the winter.

Back at the wool shed they were Crutching the ewe lambs.

The shear goes into this little cradle and stops the machine, but when picked up, it starts up and is ready to shear. It sure saves a lot of time by not having to turn the motor on and off each time.

Crutched bottoms all cleaned up for breeding.

They have a really nice working shed.

This field in front of the house is planted with Kale which they plant a lot down here for winter feed. It grows about two feet tall and they use electric wire to strip graze it in the winter.

I have not seen many bunnies but finally found this ‘hair’? on the road today. It sure looks like prime bunny country so they must limit them somehow. Poison?

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 dezertk9@yahoo.com