I spent half of last Thursday working with lambs - weighing and sorting to weight, as well as treating some sore feet. I quickly remembered why I hadn’t missed them for the 12 years I was without them!

I don’t have a dog and my quad is away getting some repairs done. Probably not the best situation to be in when going to bring in lambs that really have only been looked at over the ditch for the last month.

After three attempts at bringing in the first batch failed, we decided to move to the second batch, who, in fairness, were much more agreeable. The whole time we were working with the batch we got to yard, I was thinking, how the feck am I going to get this other batch corralled?

Help arrives

After much deliberation. the decision was made to ring a neighbour, who, thankfully, promptly arrived with a quad and two dogs and even at that it wasn’t all plain sailing.

The gateway they had to come through to get to the yard was very wet and sticky, as I had been feeding cattle there up until they were housed.

Sheep just do not like walking through that type of ground. Thankfully, we got them in and sorted eventually!

I think I’ll make sure the quad is back and the lambs are trained to eat a bit of meal before we attempt any more husbandry tasks.

Autumn calving

Calving is progressing steadily enough, with 14 calved and 14 live calves. I have lost one calf and have had a set of twins. Hopefully things will continue as they have started, but, as my mother would say, “you’re never safe to speak!”

Out of 14 calves so far, I have two bulls and 12 heifers. An unusual divide, but as long as they're alive and healthy, I’m not complaining.

The first 10 calves born have just received their Rispoval intranasal pneumonia vaccine. This particular vaccine is a one-shot intranasal vaccine that can be given after the calf is nine days of age and it gives three months of pneumonia cover. This is my third year to administer it, as I had issues with young calves coughing in the shed and I definitely think this helps.

Power cut

We had a power cut last Tuesday and for some reason that only the gods of the internet would understand, my camera system decided it didn’t want to work on my phone any more!

At this time of year, losing the camera is a bit like losing an arm. A friend of mine is a software engineer and agreed to take a look at it for me. Something he probably regretted, as it turned out to be a tricky one to fix.

There was much mutterings about IP addresses and port forwarding rules and many other things I didn’t understand, but thankfully we got going again.

Thanks Stephen, much appreciated.

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Farmer Writes: cattle housed, soil test needed

Farmer Writes: calving under way and back in the sheep game