Lamb marking.

It was a perfect day for it, even though the sheep were a little tricky to bring into the yards. The snakes thought so to! Two red bellied snakes had to be avoided when pushing the sheep. The sheep would have preferred to stay in the hay field rather than continue on to the yards. The lambs were then drafted away from their mothers and suffered the indignity of being placed on their backs, ear tagged, vaccinated and tailed. There were 17 lambs, lots more girls than boys. We'll have to do it all again in a month for the lambs second vaccination.

Iris

My white Iris have appeared.

Oh no, not again!

I just went up the back to fill in where the kangaroos had been digging under the fences. Our ewes like to use these as well and it seems one of the rogue rams did too! I didn't expect to have baby lambs looking back at me. Five very young lambs. There's a couple of large looking ewes so there could be more. This happened last year too. Feeling annoyed.

I prefer chooks!

I admit it, I'll be happy when the lamb returns to the flock. I know everyone thinks lambs are cute but after hand rearing this one I have great sympathy for ewes. Over the last few years I've learnt a lot about chickens, but recently I've decided they have far more brains than the lamb. Ours come over when ever we are around and like to help when I'm weeding. They talk to us. Also the chooks are useful members of the farm providing eggs. Even the latest pullets are friendly. Another few weeks it will be bye bye lamb!

Continuing adventures of Missy.

You'll be glad to hear that Missy spent all winter on the property living with the older ewes and rejects. Even her lamb from last year has been here. But as the photo shows sometime before coming home she visited a ram. Not ours though. There's a feral group of Dorper sheep living on our neighbours place. Those ewes had lambs last year, some were ram lambs who have grown into full rams because no one checks and marks those lambs. This is a growing problem which will have to tackled. The neighbour is a dairyman so it's not high on his jobs to do. The last thing we need is a whole group of rams looking for ewes.

Didn't think it through.

Putting another chicken house inside our vegetable area seemed the perfect way to solve our chicken problems. Each group had their own space but could see each other. Then Sue decided to plant her spring seedlings. Well the pullets were delighted! Fresh new growth, flying onto the edge of the planting boxes to eat. We were madly shooing them away while quickly building fencing around the seedlings. Hopefully these will be a deterrent. We may have to tie string across the beds like they did one hundred years ago to keep the birds away.

Spring!

Chook chaos: the remedy!

Our remedy to the chicken problem was to buy another Chook house. This will live in the vegetable garden with the two new pullets. They will get used to this and then be able to use the enclosed area as their's. The older four will remain outside. Most of the vegetables are grown in raised beds which we'll protect, when there's any vegies. Hopefully everything will settled down now.