Eggs!

We have two Bantam X Australorp chickens, who since summer have had a number of excuses not to lay eggs. It's either to hot, to cold, we're moulting or we've broody! So I was surprised a few days ago to find a white, small egg in the nesting box. Since then we've had one a day. How long this will last  before one of the above excuses returns we'll see.

Dams.

Back in June we were worried about the lack of rain. Our dams were just getting lower, but after six weeks of regular rain there has been a big change. The creeks finally started to flow and the dams to fill. Our main dam is full and the front dam is slowly getting there.

Raising lambs.

I can understand why the ewes quickly walk away from their lambs as they are bruisers! They head butt your legs looking for a teat, even biting at your trousers. Milk goes everywhere until they latch on and start drinking. So far we haven't killed this lamb, our record hasn't been good in the raising of lambs so it was a possibility, however she's drinking 275mls now. We put the lamb in a dog crate which is covered by a horse blanket in our wood shed. The chooks aren't pleased as they like to hang out in the wood shed. Initially the lamb wore a coat but that has now come off.

We were told not to give it a name and we probably won't as she's not very likable!

Soursobs.

We all know the yellow soursob which luckily we don't have a lot of, however we do have the pink flowering variety. This is Oxalis purpurea also a native of South Africa. The yellow variety is a noxious weed in South Australia and was introduced to the state from South Africa in 1841. Oxalis is toxic to breeding ewes, while it doesn't produce seed any soil disturbance allows the bulbs and bulbils to spread. We have a small area near one of our gates of this pink variety and I do keep an eye on its spread. The animals don't seem to eat it.

Bio security.

As part of our bio-security plan we had to choose a location for our dead stock. So we've been going around the property collecting the old bones to take to the new location. These bags contain what we've found so far. Now we haven't just been leaving bodies where they fell, we would move them, usually into the trees but the foxes would move the bones all over the property. We've even found sheep legs in the garden! The dogs always enjoyed these until we removed them.

Velvet nose!

BJ is always on the look out for food, especially this winter which has been frosty and cold. I wanted a close up of his face but not quite this close! His nose is beautifully soft and the lips wobbly. Unlike the rest of him which is wiry.

A hole!

This is not what I want to find when we're waiting for the ewes to lamb. The beginnings of a hole with lots of canine paw marks around, obviously a fox. We have seen a russet red, healthy looking fox around the property. The cheeky animals always stops to look back at us. There's another older hole that looks like it's been freshly opened, so we don't want anymore! I've been back to check on this and lucky this new hole hasn't got any bigger.