By Judy Barnet, Ag Columnist
This is the first year since coming to the farm that I haven’t had any winter vegetables. Somewhere along the line, I lost the plot. I did plant some early broccoli which the white cabbage moths got into and then later some garlic, cabbage, caulis and more broccoli. I nurtured them all from the start but then the days got shorter and so did my time. The only thing that managed to hang on were the self-sown lettuces – there must have been just enough rain to keep the hardy little suckers going. Of course, we don’t eat much lettuce in winter. Weekends were always taken up with events or more pressing work. I am saddened by this as one of my most important goals was to provide nourishing food for the house. To be honest, the whole garden is looking a bit of a mess but on the bright side Spring is not far away I am for one am going to be ready for it!
Saturday saw Peter and son Jack arrive bright and early to shear the sheep. It all went very smoothly. Young Jack is a great roustabout and expert sheep penner. Most of the ewes appear to have bellies full of lambs but next Monday will tell exactly how many as Bruce the Flockscan man is coming to pregnancy test. It would be great to have young Jack around to help but he will be at school. We left two sheep unshorn so we can use them to shear at Jumpers and Jazz this weekend.
And speaking of preg testing, local vet David came out today to test the heifers which, I were sure were in calf, but wasn’t 100 per cent certain on Delilah. I also wanted David to check Varina who failed to get in calf. It was good news all round. Varina was not in calf, however, all her “bits” checked out okay so there is no reason she shouldn’t go in calf should we put her with a bull. Vicky, Tess and Delilah were all four to five months in and I can’t wait until November – December for them to calve!
We have nine goat kids now but some of the goats are not looking as good as they should. They have mineral blocks out, however, we have now added a salt block and loose lick dolomite into all our paddocks. They took to using these straight away so that is a good indication they needed the extra salt and calcium.
With only a month until the start of lambing time, we have made a decision to buy in some sheep pellets and have them delivered straight into our two-tonne sheep feeder. The reasoning behind this, as opposed to how we usually feed the sheep in troughs every morning, is that the sheep (always thinking of their bellies) come rushing down every morning to get their grain and once they start lambing they tend to not want to miss out so come running down regardless of the fact that during the night or early morning they may have delivered a lamb, or two or three. Sometimes, once they have finished they forget where they planted their lamb or, if they had twins, one of them might try to follow the ewe down but the other would stay behind never to be found again by the mother. To be fair, there are some old girls who wouldn’t leave their lambs behind for all the tea in China, for up to two or three days until the lambs were big enough to follow them down.
By having the feed in a self-feeder the sheep can access the food at any time they want. It is quite hard work for the sheep to get the grain out. The holes are small and only a bit of grain falls down each time so there is no danger of them pigging out and getting grain poisoning (acidosis). Another change this year will be that I will not be separating the ewes with multiple lambs into the purpose-made lambing paddock. That paddock is quite open and the crows are always on the ready to pick the eyes out of a newborn lamb. I decided it would best to let them lamb in the home paddock which has good tree cover as well as plenty of long grass.
This morning for some reason I got to thinking about hefting, a practice used mainly in the UK. It is a traditional method of managing flocks of sheep on large areas of common land used for communal grazing. The sheep have learned over time the boundaries which were initially set by constant shepherding in a particular area, and this has become learned behaviour, passed from ewe to lamb over succeeding generations. A similar thing has happened at home on the farm where my original sheep have a certain area they move and graze in which happens to be well away from the house. The next sheep to be introduced were the English Leicesters and Shropshires. They always inhabit the area around the house and down to the yards – you never see them anywhere else. Finally, the rogue Victorian sheep have their own area at the back of the lambing paddock. None of these sheep usually go into the other’s territory.
If I introduce any new sheep, they will generally join up with one of these groups, depending on what breed they are. Odds and sods will join the Leicesters and Shropshires as they tend not to be accepted by the Southdowns.
Cheerio for now!
