Some of the Team

Have had a busy week, with catching up.  The weather has been kind, although between the 17th - 22nd August we had a frost every morning but the days were beautifully clear.  The lambing seems to be going ok.  We choose not to do a lambing beat as we feel that we cause more damage by entering the paddock.  Every Monday we got to key vantage points and have a look with the binnoculars.  The majority of our main flock are 2-tooths and lambing for the first time, so are a bit wary of the motorbike.

Buttons and Strawberry our pet lambs are doing well, with Buttons having 450 ml meals and Strawberrry 300 ml meals.  We have just dropped the feeds to 3 times a day.  Alice has now put collars on them and training them for the Playgroup Lamb Day.

As part of the team on the property, being hill country we rely on a good team of dogs.  We started with a fresh team 3.5 years ago and there is not many of that original team left.

My husband's dogs are Jess, Frank, Sam, Tip and Pearl (in order sitting on the bike).  The originals are Pearl and Jess.  We inherited the other three at the beginning of the year when friends immigrated to Tasmania and couldn't take their team with them.  Jess and Frank are huntaways (they bark and moving animals away from you), Sam, Tip and Pearl are heading dogs (they don't bark and head the animals, bringing them back to you).  Unfortunately Sam in July was diagnosed with breast cancer and has had an operation to remove this.  She seems to have come through this well to date.

My team of dogs Flo (huntaway), Dash (foxy) and Lucy (heading).  Unfortunately, with me working off farm as well their work load fluctuates a lot and at present they have had minimal working days.  Flo was inherited from the friends that went to Tasmania, and Lucy was inherited from friends of friends that were retiring from dairy farming.  I have had Dash since she was a pup and is now 12 (13 in November).

The other most recent addition is Fleet, a 14.2 h 14 yo Northland bred pony.  We have had him for 2 weeks and still getting to know each other.  I had a fall nearly 2 years ago on another horse of which I was knocked out and broke my leg in exactly the same place I did 17 years early whilst in Switzerland.  So am taking things easy as we both gain confidence.

Rain is expected this week.  We have only had 36 mls for August so far which is low.  Previous 3 year average has been 183 mls.  For the 3 month period Jun - Aug, we have historically averaged (4 year period) 546 mls and this year we are tracking 441 mls, so a little drier than expected for this period, although this year we had the wettest Mar - May period (308 ml average v's 531 ml 2011).