Good days ... and better

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Yesterday we got our first calf of the year.  The mother is Hargit and it is her fourth calf with no dramas.  I got progress reports by email - including that it was 7 degrees and hailing in the hours after she was born.

It was still very cold when I got home and all I did was look out into the paddock.  I couldn't see it so wondered if it was ok.  There was a different explanation which became obvious this morning.  I went to shift the cattle at 7 am and the calf was there and looking good and strong.  I let the cattle through into the next area that has long thick pasture including phalaris over a metre high.  The calf promptly disappeared.  I could see where Hargit was, a little separate from the others, but from less that 10 metres there was no sign of the calf.  Good instincts if there were to be predators around - particularly as Hargit was keeping a careful eye on me and the dog.   

Thursday was not so good.  We currently have six Dorper ewes.  Five lambed a few weeks ago.  I had begun to wonder whether the other had lambed and lost it as her udder looked full.  Then Kristina came in saying "The last ewe is lambing".  By the time I got out to it an hour or two later, it had two lambs, but both dead.  With only six animals those two were the difference between a lambing percentage of 117% and one of 83%.  I could have gone straight out, but I don't want to have to lamb ewes or calve cows.  I'm prepared to cull for this.  I have to concede to wondering about the longer term wisdom of human obstetric practises.  

We now have a second Maremma pup and are putting quite a bit of time into their training.  Polo has got shifted onto the ewes and lambs - as he is the more confident animal.  Josie is a little bitch - and a bit of a sook.  She has got the chickens to look after.  She was a week or two younger than Polo when she came home - and the first to leave the litter.  Inevitably it must have been a bit stressful going from 6 litter mates to a paddock.  We are feeding them 3 times a day and walk them around the boundaries of their area before each feed - plus a bit of supervised contact with the animals they are being bonded to.  It's quite a time consuming task - and Kristina is doing most of the work.  It's a bit sobering to know that they won't be fully trained as guardian dogs for more than a year.
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A new arrival

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This little guy arrived today.  Our first Dorper lamb.  We've had a couple of dry days, but he wasn't born onto warm Spring pasture ....... but he seemed happy enough and keen to feed whenever Mum would let him.  She's a first time Mum - but seemed on top of things.

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New arrivals at Moora Farm

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This morning I drove north for a couple of hours to a little place called Milloo - and picked up six F4 Dorper ewes and a pure bred Dorper ram.  They are the (re)start of the Moora Farm sheep flock.

When we first got into (hobby) farming it was sheep we started with.  My Dad had sheep (and pigs) for most of the time I was growing up.  I was familiar with dairy cows through my Mum's family - but also familiar enough to know I didn't want to milk cows.

My sheep farming at Kilmore had it's ups and downs - as I adapted to the first cross Merino ewes that most Australian farmers had in those days.  They were very flighty girls compared to the cross bred ewes I was used to.  One might even describe them as poor mothers - all too willing to abandon a lamb.

Eventually we did adapt and learned to love them - and produced some very good second cross lambs.  They were never easy though.  

When we first came to Moora we had too many ewes and 80% of our paddocks cultivated trying to get rid of the gorse.  We had to hand feed - as the couple of paddocks we still had in pasture got bare ... and then very muddy.

Imagine, if you will, my dear wife with a 20 kg bag of sheep pellets under her arm and 80 ewes all around her as she trudges through mud to a trough you can't see for milling mutton.  Not just a pretty face! 

I'm not sure what her tennis friends would make of it - but I guess most women are tougher than they look.

I'm told these Dorpers are much better mothers than Merinos - though still on the flighty side.  We've locked them up in the sheep yards since they got home and we're going to try and get them well accustomed to us before they go into any paddocks.  There is plenty of feed in the sheep yards for several days.

We are starting with just 7, but we will breed up until we have a flock of a similar size to the cattle herd.  I understand they are complementary to cattle in a cell grazing system - but I still have to work that out.  The start of the flock will just be doing clean up duty here and there for a while.

They are a lovely looking animal.

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