It's getting pretty dry

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.

Where have we been?

Well December and January has just raced away and we have lots to catch up as to what we have been doing.  Hopefully we will get there eventually.

School started today, so a bit more 'our' time to spend in the office in catchup mode. 

Currently we are having a run of what townies would call great weather ... no rain, not too much wind, and plenty of sunshine.  Yesterday was no exception with not even a cloud in the sky.  Temperatures reaching plenty close to 30 degrees.  In farmers terms, things are getting dry!  The place has certainly browned off in the last fortnight when we have had no rain.  For January we are sitting at 34.5 mls with 140 mls being the average since being on the property.  For many, this would be the return to normal late summer conditions. 

We have carried a bit of extra feed through, so have plenty of cattle feed to fill them up, but no so good for putting on weight.  All the weaners are due to be weighed next week, with all the lambs drenched and weighed also, so that will give us an indication of how well or not so well things are going.  The mixed age ewes and 2-tooths have been through the yards the last couple of days.  The majority appear to be in good condition 3.5 - 4.0 condition score.  Whilst not rolling fat, it is now of high importance to not drop any weight ideally, with tupping being a month away. 

The stock aren't particularly liking the hot weather, so there is some early starts and late finishes with some siestas during the day to make stock work a bit easier on us and the animals. 

We had a pretty quiet Xmas/NYs as we were in the middle of shearing and lamb drafts.  We have managed to escape for a week to the seaside, with the animals left on ample feed and a neighbour to look after the dogs, chooks and cat. 

Now back to the grindstone, it is timely to review budgets.  Sheep prices haven't been what most people had budgeted for, thanks to the meat industry reclaiming their losses from last year after paying us too much!  Some of that expenditure such as fertiliser, might have to be capped unfortunately. 

Over the next couple of weeks we will try and update you with summer happenings - generally a busy time for us down on the farm.

Lambs, lambs and more lambs

Well it feels like it should be near the end of the year.   For the last couple of weeks, it feels as though there has been lots of sheep work.  I think I mentioned in my last blog we were pre-wean drenching our terminal lambs.  Well, that was followed by doing all the maternal lambs too.

We then bought home all our terminal ewes and lambs on Friday 16th ... a slow walk up the road but luckily the day wasn't too hot.

We then drafted off what looked like big lambs and weighed these over the scales on the Saturday and crutched whatever needed crutching.  Saturday was one of those days when we were grateful that we had invested in some covered-in yards, as the day deteriorated into rain ... not that we were complaining because we were in need of our 21 mls.  The roof overhead, certainly made working in the rain much more enjoyable.

We managed to get the job done and washed up in time to welcome our dinner guest!

Sunday morning we were up 5.30am, mustered in the ewes and lambs and drafted off all the marked lambs.  We had only contract booked 200 lambs, but in reality we should have booked around 350!  Terminal lambs had done better than planned.  Despite our contract numbers going up each year, we are still underestimating what we can achieve.  The average weaning weight of our terminal lambs was 32 kg which means half of our lambs could have been killed off mum!  Pretty good going for us!

By 7.00 am the 223 lambs were winging there way to Te Kuiti Meats (with 2 other loads to pick up on the way).

Monday we weighed all the lambs and weaned everything in the terminal mob.  The ewes had to sit round home until Friday 24th for shearing, so the holding paddocks are well eaten out.  We shore the terminal ewes and went through and culled all the old girls (the original ewes purchased in 2008).  Some of them were 6, 7 and 8 years old.  A handful (approx 50) have had a second chance if in good condition and good udder as we haven't quite got enough replacements to get rid of all.  All the 'keepers' were taken back down the road, whilst the 'culls' had to wait till this morning for their terminal ride.  Not enough space at the works, so with 150 gone, another 100 to go.

Then inbetween we have weaned, tagged, weighed and crutched (only dirties), all our maternal ewes and lambs.  Some weaning was good and some wasn't.  The 2-tooth mobs weaned 29kg average, whilst our maternal twins did worse at 26 kg, and singles at 30kg.  Overall average 28kg.  There will be a bit of tweaking to that as some of our male lambs came through twice and haven't sorted the files out yet.  I also have yet to revise our lambing % based on lambs weaned to ewes scanned due to the extras tagged at weaning.  Need a rainy quite day to catch up!

Despite all that, another 160 lambs left this morning bound for Te Kuiti.  It was up at 5.00am to get the lambs drafted off the ewes to meet the 6.30am truck.  We were all loaded and truck departing by 7.30am.

The first lambs (terminal) didn't yield as well as would have liked - 45%, down 1-2% for milk lambs.  The black faces did 16.9 kg CW and the white faces did 16.4 kg CW.

Weaned ewes and ewe lambs this morning

Couldn't resist - Alice with two goats who had made their home between the press boxes!

Today is a quiter day, catch up. The ewe lambs have been left with mum for the day, and tomorrow we will draft off the ewe lambs, empty out and pen up for shearing, due to start on Thursday. We will shear all maternal ewes and ewe lambs over two days, before catching breath again. 

Next jobs lined up are drenching the works lambs and sorting into 2 lines based on weight, weaning our hoggets and shearing all hoggets.

Catching up on the pet lambs

Kleiner and Deigo at the beginning ...

The pet lambs - Blueberry, Deigo and Kleiner are enjoying relative freedom in the woolshed paddock.  They are now weaned but still like to come for a chat and a cuddle.

Blueberry use to walk with Alice to the bush every morning and was there to meet her off the bus every night

Alice showing off her 'Student of the Week' certificate to Blueberry and the heifers

 





The heifers checking out Blueberry





 

Alice took Blueberry to the school pet day at the end of September. She rode in style in the back of the car.  The children are broken up into 'pre-school', junior and senior.  They had to walk into the ring and the judges asked them a few questions about their lamb and how they look after it.  They then have to walk around the ring, through some poly-rods, and at the other end, their lamb was held whilst they walked away and then had to call it.  They were then awared on - Rearing, Leading and Calling, with an overall winner in each section.

Katja, Blueberry and Alice on the way to Pet Day

Alice in leading Blueberry around the ring

Junior kids all getting excited about ribbon time!

Alice and Blueberry got 2nd prize in the calling

  Alice competed in the Junior group, and as she won a ribbon, could have gone onto the Group Day at Te Kauwhata, but we decided against this year, but Alice is keen to give it a go next year. 

 

Also as part of Pet Day, they do a number of indoor activities such as 'Sand Saucer', 'Wildflower Display', 'Buttonhole' and some art work.  Alice got second with her poem.  All in all she was pretty excited about her results ... and so were we.

Alice got 3rd in teh New Entrant Sand Saucer

Alice got first in the New Entrant Wildflower display - native clematis in a calf feeder with flax leaves

And now ...

The three lambs not so long ago ...

The lambs will stay in the holding paddock until weaning, and then might find themselves with lots of other lambs.  Blueberry will get shorn and go with all the other girls down the road.

Catching up with the lambs

We are getting ready for our first draft of lambs which go the week of 18th November.  This will also correspond with weaning and shearing.

So Monday/Tuesday were late days doing the terminals ... not so good for the school girl.

Monday we mustered into the holding paddock in the morning one mob.  They had plenty of feed to occupy themselves whilst we shot off to the Nikau Coopworth (http://www.nikaucoopworth.co.nz/index.html) ram sale at Tuakau.  We had a shopping list for 5 rams, but only came away with 2.  We had short listed our rams down to about 8 that we were interested in, 2 weren't presented on sale day and one more not confident on their feet.  We tried to mix and mingle the sires up a bit, but the majority of our selected rams all came from the one sire.  We have a few other options up our sleeve, so hopefully we can get the other 3 on board without too much trouble.

Having got back on Monday, we waited for the school bus and then headed for the yards.  We drenched all the lambs with a pre-wean drench, and marked all the 'old ewes'.  These are the originals that came with the farm.  Our goal is to cull as many of them out this year, depending on replacement numbers.  I then drafted out any untagged lambs and any lamb close to works weight.

We ended up tagging 74 lambs, which was about 32 more than I had already estimated.  This has lifted our overall lambing percentage up about another 1%.  There are still a handful yet to do, either I missed them in the drafting race or they were missed in the muster.

Tuesday we walked the hills twice to muster two different mobs and do the same things again, in what was 2 hot days. 

We were interupted Tuesday afternoon with the vet visit to give the dogs their annual vaccination and to meet the school bus.

The end result we are pretty much on target for our first draft of 200 lambs to go, which equates to 26% of total terminal lambs off mum.  For us this is good.

Terminal and those without tags waiting to be weighed and tagged

Waiting to go up the race

 
On Wednesday we managed to dock our hogget lambs.  We docked 111% in the paddock and 51% to hoggets scanned.  Our scanning % was 66%, therefore our losses are 24%.  The hoggets themselves are looking in good condition and the lambs, whilst a month behind the maternals, docked probably slightly behind the weight of the maternal lambs.  The goal now is to keep the hoggets well feed up to weaning, which will be around 8th December, as ewes are a third more efficient in converting energy whilst lactating.   This gives us close to 2600 lambs which is above our target.


Hoggets and their lambs after docking

This coming week we plan to do the same to the Maternal lambs, so some long days ahead and in a busy week with lots of things on.



How did lambing go?

One of our goals was to get all our docking done by the end of September whilst Katja was still with us.  We managed to do this and hit good weather too.  We do have our hoggets to go which are ready to be docked anytime from now on.

First day of docking was 13th September.  We started with a small mob to make sure all the bits and pieces were set up right and working.  We bought them up the lane and into the yards and new shed.

Bringing the first mob of ewes and lambs home

Katja's first lamb pick up and the first lamb to be docked this season

Mal and Katja working - Katja loading the cradle, I tagged and earmarked, and Mal did the tails

 This year we splashed out and bought a docking iron - scissors this time, to replace old plunging iron.  It seemed to work well and allowed us to manage the tail length better than the old one.  On my couple of goes with the new iron, I didn't need as many muscles as it cut through the tail easily.

 

Alice in the penful of lambs

Tagging set up

This year we decided to tag all the lambs at docking with EID tags.  Above is our homemade system, made out of two old drench containers, and the disinfectant container on the right.  After 2300 lambs, I made about 8 mistakes ... not too bad really.

  

Katja with her dog and whistle

While Katja was here, we gave her her own dog (dishwashing powder bottle filled with stones) and whistle.  Sorry Katja, I have forgotten what you called your dog!  I don't think Katja mastered the whistle at all during her stay, but I know the dog pictured above didn't survive, and was replaced with a 3 litre milk bottle.

Maternal ewe and lambs in the top yards

Lunch break at the top yards

Ryan keeping the cradle full, but it only takes two terminal lambs

Terminal ewe and lambs on the other block

We docked in smaller mobs this year, taking the pressure of the days and working with when we could get labour.  It took us 8 days to dock 2300 lambs.

We were relative pleased with our lambing percentage this year, with 15% losses from scanning.
Our maternal ewes achieved 144% to ewes scanned and our terminals a poorly 110%.  The terminal ewes are the last of the original ewes, which will hopefully be culled this year, so looking forward we would expect this to lift.  Ultimately, it is the number of lambs that survive to the truck + replacements that need to be calculated back to show how successful lambing has been.

Our next task is to give all the lambs a pre-wean drench.  Having gone through evaluation of drenches, whether to include a tape drench or not, we have decided to go for a tape drench - First.  There is some research that suggest a pre-wean drench is beneficial for both ewe and lamb.  The impact of whether to use a tape drench or not, is a bit more mixed, but some trials had shown a positive outcome.  We are looking at weaning terminals the week 18th November and the Maternals the following week (25th November).  Then we will be into shearing, weighing, condition scoring and more drenching! 

Where there is livestock, there is dead stock

Apologies for the delay in getting anything posted ... it has just been one of those times and there is lots to catch up on.  We have had docking, the bull going out to the bulls, ram selection on the radar and our silage is being cut as we speak.

You would have read in an earlier blog that I lost my huntaway Flo unexpectedly.  That was that start of things.  Since then, I have had to say goodbye to my foxy at the end of September, who I have had for 14 years, or would have been 14 on 7th November.  I got her as a pup from my parents who bred her.  I'll have to dig out one of her pup photos ... she had a spotty black and white toy to keep her company until it finally got torn to bits. 

Dash's demise was reasonably quick ... getting sick on Friday night, obviously didn't have a good night and Saturday she wasn't herself although still hydrated.  She was sick again Saturday night and Sunday she was on a downhill path.  She started to get dehydrated although we did manage to get some liquid into her.  Whilst we had her around us, after lunch she decided to retire to her kennel.  I visited her there, and then about an hour later she had passed away.

She had been my buddy and done lots of things with me, travelling here and there.  She will be sadly missed.  We had a small family ceremony as we put her in the 'garden' wrapped up in her sheepskin blanket.  We have now planted a kowhai tree over the top to remember her by.

But that wasn't the end of our dramas.  On the 13th October we found two heifers, 1 paralysed rear end and one in a creek.  As we don't have a tractor, we had to call on our neighbour to help get the two heifers to flat ground - neither able to stand.  In the paddock next door we discovered my horse had lost his cover, and then on closer inspection discovered that his left hock was rather swollen and he was putting no weight on it.  As it was a weekend, we rang round the neighbours to find some anti-flam (we live in a strong horse area, both recreational and polo) to give him, provided him some feed and water.  Unfortunately he was at the bottom of the gully.  Pampering him for a few days, we progressively got him into a flat paddock.  There was speculation as to what damage he had done.  The final diagnosis though was that he had broken his leg and that means only 1 thing, that he would have to be put down.

Sad looking Fleet on his last morning

So, I took the kids to Mainly Music, and Malcolm did what he had to do and the neighbour helped to bury him.  He is down the drive so every day, I walk past him a minimum of 4 times a day.  I feel so sorry that there was nothing I could have done for him.

But that is not the last of things ... the 2 heifers we were rolling and sitting up twice a day, feeding and giving water to.  After 2 weeks of doing this, there was no response by either animal of their hind quarters.  They had started to loose considerable amount of condition.  We suspect that the incident of the heifers and Fleet were connected as they we beside each other.  We are not sure whether Fleet scared the cattle, or the cattle scared Fleet.  One of the heifers had a burn mark on its back and burnt between its back toes ... was it lightining?

Our two patients

Rightly or wrongly, we decided to put the heifers down.  It was unfortunate for the two week period that they were being looked after, we probably had some of the worst weather - wind that we could barely stand up in, cold weather, rain and a mini-storm.  I guess we will never know what really happened, but  there appears to be no other damage.

So, it has been a rather emotional month or more on the farm.  I am hoping that we have had our fair share and that things will be on the up from now.