This one's for you Blu........and we have lambs!

Yesterday our first lambs arrived, this set of twins will be the first of many.  Not a very closeup pic as I didnt want to disturb them. 

The lovely Blu, a 'clueless city girl'(her words not mine, lol) asked a few sheep questions on my last post about sheep on our farm and in New Zealand.  We run 2900 ewes, 750 hoggets, and about 70 cattle here on our farm. 

Blu also asked about black sheep. We don't have black sheep, but yes, you definitely can get them.  They usually only look really black when they are just shorn, then as their wool grows they look more of a brown colour.  Every couple of years we seem to get a completely black lamb born from a white ewe mated to a white ram.  I guess it is just one of those genetic anomalies that happen every now and then, but they are pretty cute when it does happen.  

And yes, there really are more sheep in New Zealand than people, by a huge amount.  4 million people and about 45 million sheep.    Enough of the sheep jokes now, thankyou!

Today we had the conveyor contractor here, to vaccinate our main mob of ewes.  The sheep run up the drafting race, up the little ramp and on to the conveyor.  It is a bit like a horizontal escalator that they are moved along and we give them two small injections.  One is a long acting drench, the other protects the ewes and therefore the lambs through the ewes milk, from several clostridial diseases like tetanus, pulpy kidney, blood poisoning and a couple of others I can't recall at the minute!  The conveyor makes it a very quick, less stressful job on both sheep and farmer!  We put 2000 ewes through in just over 2 hours.

Then it was time to spread the ewes out for lambing.  We scan the ewes in late winter, and the twins all lamb together in their own paddocks, with the single bearing ewes lambing in their own mobs too.

The farm is starting to green up again now that winter is almost over, we have had a few beautiful days, so the grass is really growing now.

This next pic is from near the back of our farm, looking back towards our sheds on the left of the picture.  The hills and paddocks in the far distance belong to our neighbours.

And these two are from near the other end of the farm.  Our house is down below the trees in the middle.  The cattle yards left of the middle of this pic are ours and so is the paddock beyond them, but the rest of what you see here is all our neighbours land, but these are some of the beautiful views we enjoy.  Most of our farm runs to the right of the top pic.  The bottom pic is looking north from the same spot and our paddocks are one on each side of the driveway going in towards our house.

Well, that is enough farming for one day, hope that helps Blu, thanks for your interest.  My garden is calling me today, it is another gorgeous spring-like day, so time to get some more roses pruned(very late, I know).

Thanks for visiting today, and for all your lovely comments on my needleturn last post, bye for now,

Nicky