Holidays and Cheese

Well we have finally managed to have a wee break off farm for more than 2 nights!  We have timed the weather pretty well and Alice and I had 4 great days away at the beach and Mal is still there.  Unfortunately he had to come home in the middle to load out the bulls.

The big bulls we were sharefarming have gone on a terminal trip.  Of the two mobs:

• Averaged 600 kg LW, grew at 1.10 kg/day over a 207 days and killed out at 315 kg CW
• Averaged 548 kg LW, grew at 1.12 kg/day over a 146 days and killed out at 273 kg CW

I came home early as work awaited me and someone had to shift the animals.  First jobs home were to open the gates for the hoggets/light ewes to drift to a new paddock and shift the three mobs of heifers and treat a lamb for flystrike.  The dogs having had limited run time in 4 days were taken for a run to the back of the farm.

We have had some more spore counts taken and still have a reading of zero, which is great news so far.  We will aim to take a pasture sample on a weekly basis to monitor the situation.

Before we left on holiday we had the vet out to palpate and blood test our flock of rams before the breeding season.  In recent seasons there has been out breaks of brucellosis (http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/pests/brucellosis) but luckily we have not been affected by it.  If infected the rams easily spread this within the flock at mating time and/or amongst other rams.  The infection can lead to reproductive failure or abortions.  At palpating time, the vet is checking to see that the testicles are healthy ie no lumps or abnormalities.  All the rams passed the palpapation test and awaiting results of blood test.

On the cheese making front:

• the Farmhouse Cheddar has been coated in wax and sitting out in the shed where it will age for 5 weeks.  End of February will be cutting time!
• I made a Feta, but unfortunately didn't take a photo of it and now it is all gone.  It had a lovely fresh creamy taste and didn't last long at all making its way into salads and top of crackers, or on its own.
• Milk is out to make Caerphilly cheese which orignated from Wales.

Making the cheese hasn't been hard but can be time consuming and getting timing right so not up at all hours of the night or sometimes having other things to do.  Patience is required.  As mentioned in an earlier blog we bought the Hard Cheese Kit.  In this it provides you with the mould, wax and bowl, butter muslin, starter culture, cheese salt, steriliser and instructions.  In the booklet it gives recipes for 3 cheeses and a feta.  There are other kits to get you started with other types of cheese. 

In addition to the kit, we do need a few other things such as:

• cheese vat - am using my perserving pot
• incubator - am using a 4.2 litre tupperware container in our chilly bin
• thermometer - am using our electronic soil thermometer
• Pipette - am using one from our FECPAK kit (not used for FECs first thankfully)
• Maturing box - am using a small chilly bin
• Feta mould and brining container - am using the hard cheese mould and it fits snuggly into a round clik clack container
• Cheese press - used a jar with my husband's weights on top
• Knife for cutting curd and a draining spoon - all things in the kitchen
• Timer - my oven timer is my next best friend and use it to time all steps in process.

The only part of the kit you will need to replace over time includes:

• salt
• steriliser
• culture
• milk
• maybe butter muslin but I just wash and reuse

Hobbies and stuff

Well, I couldn't resist going to the next door dairy farm and getting some milk to start my cheese making experience.  This coincided with getting a cheese making kit (http://www.madmillie.com/) for my birthday.  So, with Mal out at a meeting I nothing better to do but start, and managed to get it set in its mould before midnight!  Most people start at simple cheeses, I decided to start with a farmhouse cheddar.  Amazingly everything went to plan and have now have my cheese air drying before waxing.

Farmhouse Cheddar 1 day old

So, Mal is onto the home brew beer and I the cheese so we can have beer and cheese sessions!

Also this week, we sorted out our store lambs on Monday and took them to the Frankton sale on Tuesday.  We had a mixture, with a handful of black face lambs, some white face ram lambs and white face ewe lambs (n=190).   There was a fair turnout of buyers on a nice sunny warm summers day (not that we have had too many of them to date) and the lambs were sold for about an average of $90 for our smalls.  The results from Tuesday 17th results can be viewed at http://www.pggwrightson.co.nz/Services/SaleyardResults (although the results aren't up yet) or http://mylivestock.co.nz/market_reports (which is listed). 

The girls are home this week of the school holidays, and Mal had them out working yesterday with the goal of getting most of our drains sprayed out to allow better water flow.  By the end of the day, the tank was empty and the drains were done.

Today, the balance of the lambs finally got their fly treatment.  With all the wet weather about, fly as been prominent this season.  All the ewes and ewe lambs were done 10 days off shears, whilst the ram lambs we left until our January sales were done.  It is not a nice thing to watch, an animal being struck.  There is a simple article on fly strike on the Lifestyle Block website if you want to read more -  http://www.lifestyleblock.co.nz/the-basics/article/141-flystrike.html.

Today brings another fine day, no significant rain for a week now!  The grass is still lush, the stock are finally back on track and growing again, as are the weeds.  Finally it is starting to feel a bit like summer!

Fridolin flies the coop

Today is Fridolin's last day, but there is one last job before he goes, getting up at 6am to put the lambs on the truck this morning.  180 lambs are off on a terminal truck ride.  (Since I started writing this blog, 2 days have passed!)

This week we have had relatively fine weather with only 38 mls falling, with 22.5 mls on Thursday, so we have had an opportunity for getting out and doing some jobs without getting too wet.

Monday we headed north to Maramarua and collected our new rams.  It is non-negotiable since we have been farming out here that our rams must come from a FE tolerant flock and that they must record their information on SIL (Sheep Improvement Limited) database (http://www.sil.co.nz/).  I do have to confess at this time, that I have worked for SIL in the past so have a bit of an understanding of the records.

Our trait focus when selecting rams, is reproduction and growth, as we are building both of these traits in the flock.  Our focus is selecting the highest DPO (Dual Purpose Overall) or DPP (Dual Purpose Production) animal we can afford, and then within a small group select animals that do well in the sub-index of DPR (Dual Purpose Reproduction) and DPG (Dual Purpose Growth) without necessarily having negative traits in any of the other sub-indexes.

Studying the records before looking at the rams

Malcolm and Jan putting the rams into the diamond

The group of rams to select from

This year was pretty easy, as although there were 30 rams in the group, we had narrowed it down to about 6 based on records.  We got the top 2 in to check conformation, and in this instance we rejected one, and then got the next 2 and chose what we considered to be the next best animal.  Hence we walked away with our 2 2-tooth rams in less than half an hour.  In addition we took 2 older rams to boost numbers, that still had good records.

Rams ready for the trip home

Once at home, they got a drench and stood in the yards overnight, before joining the other rams.

On Monday, we also took in a pasture sample to get tested for FE spores.  The results came back 0, which is good, but is something we will be watching closely, especially on the paddocks where the weaners graze.  There is lots of good information about Facial Eczema such as the Beef + Lamb New Zealnad link as follows http://www.beeflambnz.com/facial-eczema.  There are parts of the Franklin and Northland areas which are already showing elevated spores. 

Tuesday we had more rain!  and managed to weigh up some more lambs, which were the ones that went on the truck on Sunday morning.  The 187 that headed off to Te Kuiti Meats averaged 16.4 kg CW which was more than we were expecting as we had weighed a bit deeper in the flock.

In the afternoon we did a bit of investigating into Farm IQ (http://www.farmiq.co.nz/) deciding on whether to join or not, what information to put in and what we wanted out of it for both the sheep flock and for the finishing bulls.  We are still evaluating things at present, so watch this space.

Wednesday was a day off as it was birthday, and my policy is not to work on this day.  We spent the day in town doing lots of jobs but did managed to sneak in a lunch out.

We started having some fine weather at last, so there was some tidying up of ewes and lambs about the place, especially following the rain and start and stop shearing.  So finally all the lambs and ewes were put away in their respectful mobs.  Fridolin spent some time stripping a fenceline and we managed to get this all cleaned up before he left.

Rain Rain Rain

Am sitting in the office catching up on the weeks activities, as outside it is raining yet again.  Between the 29th Dec - 4th Jan, we had 100mls.  The 5th - 6th Jan we had nice weather again, but the rain has set in again for the weekend.

With the last of the shearing out of the way, Fridolin headed to the local cafe, and we took the girls to town for the day on 31st December.  Alice saw her second ever movie ... The Muppets.  Whilst fairly active during the movie she enjoyed her popcorn and said Kermit and Miss Piggy were her favourite.

Fridolin then took off up north till Tuesday night with some others.  We had a quiet New Years day and back into work on the 2nd.  The dairy weaners were drenched and weighed and separated out into two mobs.  The top 50 in weight (approx 135 kg +) were taken down the road to another rotation.

Top 50 Dairy weaners about to go down the road

The overall growth rate was a little disappointing, so hopefully smaller mobs will help over the next month or so.  Also weighing took place on a coldish days and the weaners weren't doing a lot of eating.  We are still on target though to reach the 200kg+ on 1st May.

In the afternoon, 600 Mixed Age (MA) Ewes were Androvax (http://www.msd-animal-health.co.nz/products/androvax-plus/020_product-overview.aspx).  We have chosen just the 4-tooth and 4 year old ewes in the Maternal Flock to be vaccinated.  The aim is that the product can give up to 20% increased scanning and is an additional tool which can be used in conjunction with genetics and feeding to maximise sheep production on farm.  We are weary not to vaccinate the smaller or younger sheep and we also need to be in a position to feed the additional lambs and the ewes increased feed demand at lambing time.

Tuesday was a bit of an odd job day as we had quite a bit of rain.

Wednesday all the lambs were mustered.  Lambs separated into 30 kg + line and 30kg below, and drenched accordingly.  The larger mob was put over the scales to see if any ready for the works.  Only a portion were ready.  The lambs were returned to the hills, and the lambs to be drafted will be taken out on Tuesday and kept on the finishing country until ready for the works.

Thursday was quite a bit of stock work, shifting sheep mobs around on their rotations.  Wool buyer (http://www.woolfirst.co.nz/buyer/manukau/index.shtml) came to collect the wool.  We have limited wool room in our woolshed so wool gets trucked away regularly during shearing.

Inside the woolshed awaiting removal

Loading the truck

Tying down, ready for the trip

Our indicator for weighing died the day before, so we borrowed one of the neighbours and weighed our two lots of  bulls.  The big bulls 585 kg and the smaller mob 535 kg.  Growth rates were back this month in part the pasture quality (not quantity) and amount of wet days!


Big Bulls 580 kg+

Big bulls meeting the smaller bulls!

Smaller big bulls going in to get weighed



Bulls being weighed, Fridolin watching, Sal on the scales and Alice supervising!

Friday we left Fridolin home alone with a list of jobs such as stripping a fence, spraying drains, mowing lawns, managing the shearers when they arrive to finish off our 92 remaining woollies and lay the dags out in the woolshed for drying once the shearers had left.

That's the end of our week as it settles into rain for the weekend.



What are your thoughts??

Our blogspot has been going since August (just over 5 months).  In that time we have had 600+ hits.  Of these we have no idea if they are repeat hits or new people, or what interests them mostly about the blog.

Countries that are tapping in are New Zealand, Germany, Russia, USA, Lativia, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Armenia, Czech Republic and Romania.  Apologies if we have missed your country out.

It would be really good to know what you like about the site, what you would like to hear or see more about etc, your feedback would be appreciated. 

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.