We are all tired ...

It has been a busy week down on the farm.  All of the maternal ewes and lambs have been weaned, all the dirty ones crutched, weighed all the lambs, and have shorn all the ewes and ewe lamb replacements.



Fridolin trying his hand at crutching



First day of shearing, one of the shearers hurt his hand about 1/2 hour into the run, so we were down to 2 shearers until about midway of 2nd run, until a relief shearer arrived. 



Shearing snaps



Tally for first day was 206 ewes and 446 replacements.

Tally for second day was 873 ewes, 3 lambs and 18 rams.



presser putting the wool in the press

We sorted through all our ewes and are putting 189 light ewes with our hoggets, and 130 ewes have gone to the terminal mob, with 8 culls.  The average weight of ewes were 58 kg and 2.94 CS. Target is to maintain ewes at this at minimum, with a target of raising at least 0.5 of a CS before tupping in March.

Weaning, the ram lambs averaged 31.15 kg and the ewe lambs 27.93 kg, giving an overall average of 29.56 kg.  For our maternal mob, this is up on previous years. As are the ewe weights and condition. 

Also this week, we trucked out 101 of our maternal male lambs, averaged 17.4 kg CW and 102 of our cull terminal ewes, all to Te Kuiti Meats.

Cull Ewes waiting in anticipation

2nd draft of lambs awaiting the truck

Waiting to get loaded



The truck that came to take them away



The much needed rain has arrived today, as we put away stock in their paddocks, and shift the cattle, before having a rest of what is left of a Sunday!