It's 2.30 pm, having just finished lunch and a coffee, with the hot day we are taking things slow for an hour or two. The sun is beating down and parching our grass and soil. The season has certainly turned the colour of the landscape a scorched brown. With each passing truck, there is a wave of dust that floats over the front paddock. Today there is bearly a breathe of wind, so plenty of birds and bees to be heard.
In my last blog I commented on it getting dry, a total of 39.5 mls for January. The first Sunday in February I tipped out 39 mls, with another 24 mls the next day, but haven't had a drop since. The creeks are certainly getting low, and it is getting harder to contain animals in their paddock as they start sneaking next door to see if the grass is greener.
Today, Mal mustered in the Terminal Ewes between 6 - 8 am, when stock are easier to shift in the cooler morning air. With 10 days till the ram goes out, we gave them a pre-tup drench and conditioned scored them. We separated off 200 of the lighter ewes to be lighter stocked over tupping and the better conditioned at a slightly higher rate. The average condition score was 3.5, which considering the season isn't too bad. The risk now, is them loosing weight with the ram going out. It is pleasing to say, that of our 700 terminal ewes, all barr 50 of them we have bred over the first 5 years of being on farm.
We also collected any straggler ewe lambs - they have been drenched and age marked.
Tomorrow morning at 6am, we have 200 lambs heading off on the truck for a terminal trip. We crutched what needed crutching yesterday, and hope they yeild well.
We have started our spore counting on a weekly basis, with results back on a Wednesday. Results so far:
Dixon Road, South Face = 0
Woodleigh Road North Face = 10,000
The first of the Time Capsule bullets have started to go into the heifers, and this will be our focus for the week to get the remainder in, to protect them from Facial Eczema.
We have had a French Canadian, Priscillia here for the last week, and has helped out on farm, in the house, with Alice etc. Will post some photos when I get more organised. Amongst all the work we did manage a half day break to Raglan yesterday.
