Pet Sheep

When you have a sheep farm you usually end up with poddy lambs. I personally would never leave a lamb that I thought may not survive the night in the paddock.
When it is lambing time Kim checks the ewes twice a day to ensure all is well with the flock.  If he sees a lamb that is weak or a twin/triplet lamb that is very tiny they usually end up at the house being hand reared.
Our first poddy lamb Baa Baa is now 6 years old although he is a wether and would normally end up on the dinner plate I just could not eat a pet. So he stayed with the flock and lives a happy life.


Sheep actually make good pets, they are very low maintenance and very friendly. Baa Baa is like a dog always looking for a snack of bread or a scratch behind the ears. If, you allowed him Baa Baa he would inside the house lying beside your chair. Sheep belong in a paddock you can’t keep sheep in your garden because they will eat every plant and flower in sight.

My friends daughter feeding Pixie. Pixie is now fully grown, had 2 lambs and still come up for a pat. check out the bottle it is an old beer bottle.

Me giving orders to my friends kids about feeding lambs. Being fed is Speedy. He was a mernio that my daughter found in the middle of the road on a freezing winter night. Sadly Speedy died this year

A friends daughter giving Daisy a pat. She was the best behaved poddy lamb. We had an old green bath mat that we called her grass. We would tell her to lie down on the mat and she would. Daisy is still with us and has a few lambs she also still comes up for a pat.

Here is Baa Baa coming to see what is going on.

Good friend Kerrie holding Pixie

Pixie in her bed after a long day with the kids

We feed our poddies full cream powdered cows milk made up with water to the instructions on the package. New lambs are started slowly 60 to 100 ml and frequently 4 or 6 times a day. We never, repeat never feed the lambs through the night. By the time they are about 2 weeks old they are on 4 feeds a day then gradually this is reduced to 2 feeds per day. We usually wean them at about three months. Although I know people who wean lambs much ealiuer than that.

Rain wonderful rain

The weather has been pretty dry around here with much less winter and spring rain than normal. My garden is looking pretty parched and I am getting worried. We have been through many years of heart breaking drought from 2002 to 2009  when the land received much lower than average rainfall.

However, even in the driest years the dams that water the stock did not dry up. Some of our paddocks are watered by troughs that fed from a bore. We are lucky that water for stock and humans has never been an issue. Many property owners in our area had to buy water in the drought years.

The big dry came to an end on 2010 when the area received twice the normal rainfall. 

After receiving so much rain last year someone turned off the tap during the Autum. There was no rain to grow any feed for the winter. Winter came and while the weather was much cooler there was very little rain. Thoughts of another drought year were ever present in our minds. During September we received some good rain at the begining of the month only to be followed by strong winds and no follow up rain. October only recived half the normal rainfall and what feed had grown during the month was drying out fast. At last, in the last week of October our property received 30 ml or about an inch of much needed rain.  Followed up another 60 ml or 2.5 inches in the first week of November with more rain is forecast for this week.

Rain water pouring towards the dam

These pictures were taken in the middle of the drought.

Hubby Kim and good friend Jeff  placing rocks in the garden during the dought years. Look at the background not a blade of grass in sight.

Kim planting trees in the garden. Just look how dry the place looks.

At least we had enough water to establish the garden.

Breeding Healthy Sheep

Whilst I am certainly no expert in sheep health I have learned a lot about keeping the stock healthy over the past eight years. When we first started breeding there were some skinny sheep in what looked like really good pasture. We drenched the sheep and the next days 2 of them were dead in the paddock. Not a good start to breeding sheep. Kim did some internet research and found Pat Coleby's book "Healthy Sheep Naturally". We read the book cover to cover and it made good sense. Kim also read stories of other farmers who had successfully used Pat's methods. Kim built the mineral stations and the sheep self administer the minerals. This has led to a reduction in the need to worm sheep with commercial drenches. Although in wet conditions worms will be a problem for sheep and cause weight loss, lung conditions and death if not managed carefully. If, prolonged wet conditions prevail we drench and keep the minerals.

 


More recently, Kim noticed some sheep were looking poor again despite drenching and minerals. He spoke to guy a Delta Agricultural at Yass. He explained about the sheep's mineral tank and how the mineral stores can become depleted. He recommended seaweed meal. Kim told him that we had seaweed meal out for the sheep but he was worried about overdosing them. Mr Delta Ag advised us to give the sheep as much seaweed meal as they wanted. So that's what we did. Here is a picture of our beautiful healthy and some very heavily pregnant ewes

We purchased 4 20kg bags of seaweed meal and placed 1 bag in each mineral station. The 20 kg of seaweed meal costing almost $100 was gone in a few hours. It was an expensive exercise that we could not afford to continue. However, Mr Delta Ag told us when the sheep’s mineral tank is full they will stop eating the mineral in large quantities. On the 4^th day the sheep did stop eating the meal in such large amounts. A few weeks later you could not tell which sheep were poor as they all looked great.

Something other than sheep

Do you know what a CNC machine is?

CNC stands for computer numbered cutting (I think!)

It is a computerised carving machine  that is able to carve the most intricate carvings. My dear husband Kim loves anything to do with computers and worked in this industry for over 30years.

Did I mention that he is very clever and can do most anything? like build houses, farm sheds and do electritcal work......

.....back in 2008 Kim heard about theses wonderful machines and wanted to buy one, however, the cost 30K would make that near impossible, but not for Kim. He scoured the internet and found Joe's CNC, which is a site that allows people to buy plans to build the machine.
Kim bought the plans, pages and pages of straight and squiggly lines that I couldn't start to uderstand! He built the machine from scratch it took a few years and much fiddleing (and lots and LOTS of questions from me and our four children about when it will be done!!) but he finished the machine in early 2011.

Here are some pictures of his work.

The machine!

Wood Carvings;

Corian Lithophanes;

Another year.. Another field day..

Is that 5am ringing on my alarm clock? I'm sure I just laid my head down.. But alas it is that time of year again where we must brave the weather (will it be snow, blazing heat or blustering winds?) and discuss with the hoards of those interested in the fabulous Dorper.


I feel an old hand at the field days now, this was our 5th year with a Dorper exhibit and our 3rd as the combined "Southern Tablelands Dorper Group" and I feel our busiest yet!


Every year we gather the Friday before and step out the site and build a design pleasing to the eye and easy to manoeuvre around. And this year it was the ladies turn to design the site (did you hear we won an award!?). The site was set with five pens full of sheep at the front and five pens to the left. Undercover areas for people to meander through and the large marquee at the back of the site housing the weary and the knowledgeable. 
We met and greeted each potential client with unwavering enthusiasm, even those who had never seen a "sheep that shed his fleece" before were all welcome. Questions were answered and lots of sales made.
We were honoured to receive an award (here it is!!) on the Sunday for the best livestock exhibit and it is still a hot talking point when we call get together. 


The field day is a tough slog, but we wouldn't have it any other way. Murrumbateman and surrounds are just gorgeous and if you haven't already take the time to explore the area. Murrumbateman is blessed with open gardens, vineyards with cellar doors open for coffee and cakes and even a chocolatier is set to open her doors shortly.  Drive the winding Murrumbateman Road and take in the scenery for a relaxing Sunday afternoon, its sure not to disappoint.


(thanks to Laura Hurley for the photos!)

The whole gang (with the award) and a verrrrry tired little lamb!

A little dorper cross ewe with an "she looks hungry" feed from me.

My daughter Alison and Husband Kim 

Myself and my husband Kim

I swear it’s just like magic!

When the “big dry” hit, we knew we needed to do something. 

Being the novices we were at the time we were spending thousands on hand feeding the stock, after all even the resourceful Dorper can’t live on dirt! I recall the days of driving the hay through the dirt, no grass in site, and the sheep running a pace so fast towards us you would think you were in the middle of a dust storm, and the endless trudging with bags of sheep pellets just so the girls could have some sustenance. 

But this just wasn’t working. It was like having a funnel down the throat of the sheep and we were just pouring down dollars.

My husband and I coined onto the idea of growing grass in greenhouses. We spent many nights of debate and many hours in the car investigating the possibilities. We mapped out the plastic and the framework needed to build such a device, however on talking to others and further investigation we found that this was the best way to grow mould and kill your stock. We were completely shattered. 

That is until one day we stumbled across a company named Fodder Solutions. 

It was almost like they were mind reading. 

They had a compact system, like a magic box, which had an air-conditioning unit, sprinklers, trays, racks, thermo control… and the best bit was they had taken into consideration how NOT to grow mould!

My dear husband spent many days crunching numbers, hay and pellet costs VS the cost of the system. The decision was finally made to go ahead and make the big purchase.
On the day it was due for delivery we waited around like children on a Christmas morning, then it finally arrived, rolled off the truck and was ready for use. 

I remember the awe I felt opening the doors on our sixth day, ready to feed out our first lot of fresh GREEN (that was the biggest hit!) barley grass. Then the utter heartbreak when the sheep wouldn’t even look at it, they seemed to look around you thinking this weird smelling green alien was a joke, and the real food was coming.
Days of this went by… Then one plucky little ewe took the plunge and sunk her teeth into the grass, she couldn’t stop eating. Sheep as we know are followers and this one little girl started the onslaught we still know today, thundering hooves from hills away followed by a chorus of bleating and the feed you so carefully laid out is gone before you turn around.

The "fodder shed" is now my husbands (and bonus "son" Cameron's) relax time. They like nothing more then opening those doors, pulling out the green grass that grew almost like magic, then meticulously filling the new trays to start the cycle again. 

where the seeding begins!

The final product!

Cleaning the trays, being careful to kill mould

First blog

Welcome to my first entry, let me start by telling you a little about myself.

My name is Lia, I'm a born and bred city girl, well I was until my husband had the genius idea of reliving his childhood and purchased a farm.

That farm is what we now know as Claremont and we have been here over seven years, I couldn't imagine my life any other way... even though some days I do get a little over the mundane tasks!

We started "Claremont" on the whim of a fantasy farm idea. We had idyllic dreams of rolling hills and hot breakfasts. However most days, before the house was built, were met with cold blustering winds and all of us huddled around a makeshift camp site. The weather was so miserable and the wind so bad that my parents decided against building a house with us! (I'm sure they regret that idea now)

We looked at several options of what to run on the farm, we toyed with the idea of Lowline cattle and various other small breeds (even falabella ponies at one stage!) but finally settled on the White Dorper. Our reasoning for choosing this breed were its low maintenance characteristics, which were perfect for the weekend farmers we were at the time. Dorpers require no shearing, crutching or mulesing, they are excellent mothers, hardy and fast maturing. My husband Kim eventually retired and manages the majority of the farm workload on his own whilst I am at work. I find myself fantasizing about the days that I will be able to spend on the farm with him, without the worries of work and the weekend ending.

Claremont White Dorpers started with a relatively small ET program with the aim of getting good genetics to start our bloodline. We have since invested in animals from several different studs being careful to pick out features of animals to better our existing stock. We have recently had the honour of importing embryo's from world champion stock, a little more about them is below, and I can't help but be a little proud! 

This is one of our ET Ram lambs by the world champion Ram "Mr Bond". This is the last of his genetics available. We will have semen straws available in the coming months. We are very hopeful that this Ram will be shown at the Sydney Royal Show 2012

 This little man has been a little unwell from all the rough housing boys do but is definately on the mend now and starting to fill out to be a nice looking boy!

And lastly another shot of two of the boys. 

Until we blog again!

Lia