The Sheep sides with the Cats

Its shearing time at Greenvale and this weekend was the Australian Football League grand final with Geelong (The Cats) playing Hawthorn (The Hawks). My brother and uncle Ken, in the shearing shed forced their allegiences on our pet sheep Madison, who we still call a lamb.

Sadly, the underdogs, the Hawks won on the day, and Madison is still roaming the paddocks with her new hair do....

As a friend said... there is no C in Goat!

Marking Lambs at Greenvale

This years lambing is now complete and now its time to prepare them for the next stage. Mothers and the lambs are brought into the yards. The mothers are given a drench (medicine by mouth) for worms. The lambs are then seperated off and yarded. Each of them is then loaded into a device which holds 4 lambs in a circle in a conveyor belt process the lamb is loaded on, on its back. A rubber band is then placed around its tail and depeding on whether its a male or female another rubber band is place around thier testies both having the effect of cutting blood flow and dropping off after some time has passed. An injection is administered to guard against pulpy kidney which is a fatal desease affecting lambs, then the lamb is given a drench for worms also and then release. Although we havent finished marking lambs we will have marked around 1800 in this go around for this year.

Crutching

With Lambing at Greenvale in full swing with one mob of sheep a second mob were being prepared today starting with crutching. The sheep were rounded up the night before and as many as will fit are put inside the shearing sheed and a number of them put under the shearing shed in case it rained. Aparently shearers dont like shearing wet sheep.

After the shearers finishing crutching they are pushed out the shoot. Once enough sheep have been crutched they are pushed up a run with the help of Ace our Australian Kelpie so that they cant move. This helps with the next process which is drenching which prevents worms.

The sheep are now ready for the next process. The lambing.

Lambing

The first of ewes in lamb will soon have finished lambing and its been quite sucessful so far compared to last year when we lost litterally hundreds of lambs to the forces of nature, the cold, crows, foxes and eagles. This year by comparison we have only loss a hand full. Amanda and Jude witnessed one ewe giving birth to 4 lambs... Ben and I past by one night and found one by itself which we picked up and relocated nearer the flock hoping that it would find its mother.

Lambs to sell

Scott and I were to have met dad to help with rounding up the lambs to be viewed by our stock agent Radar. I however, I think got the communication wrong and we ended up at my fathers farm instead of Jaskum park some 30 minutes out of the way. By the time we go there the ome 500 lambs were already in the yards and Radar had inspected them and they were to be sent off to market on Monday to be sold. I believe we have another 1000 to sell at some point in the next little while.

Manx Loaghtan

Today I visited the secretary of the Manx Loaghtan Breeders group who kindly offered to show me her stock and discuss the breed. Carol and her husband Mark had a lovely thatched cottage in Gloucestershire just west of Gloucester itself.

Carol breeds Manx sheep for hobbie only. The sheep in my mind were beautiful animals especially the ones with the 4 perfectly formed horns and the one with the most perfect horns which Carol intends to show was a year old ram.

The breed is substantially healthier than commercial varieties with one farm, Langley Chase in the UK winning several awards.

Ive enquired to the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service and there response is as follows:

AQIS Reference number 2008-0266

Dear Mr Kumnick

The Australian live animal import conditions do not permit the importation of ruminant animals from any country other than New Zealand. These conditions have been in place for a number of years and they are based on the risk assessments on the importation of live ruminants from overseas countries, carried out by Biosecurity Australia.

Regards

Dr Don Leelawardana. BVSC, MACVSc

Anyway to date, searching on the web Ive found no breeders from Australia or New Zealand. My search will continue.....