Moree and 'Fun' With Sheep
Trip Start
Oct 14, 2008
1
2
Trip End
Dec 21, 2008
Moree,
New South Wales,
Australia
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Got a taxi to the bus station and got on the bus to Moree. Not to bad and pretty interesting getting away from the coast. Julie picked us up from the station, good to finally meet her after talking on the phone for a few weeks. She took us back to her house and we met the family John (her husband), Zoe, Toby and another couple who will be working on the harvest.
15/10/2008
Sample stand training
16/10/2008
Sample stand training
17/10/2008
Up early to get to Narrabri for health and safety training
Lamb Marking - Day 2
. Quite boring but the food was good. On the way back we got to drop in to Bellata where we will be based for the first harvest. We saw our house - lovely view of the silo's. It's fine inside, air con in the kitchen and in our room so that's the main thing. In the evening we got pizza's and went to bed at a reasonable hour, to get up rather early...18/10/2008
I was up at 4am (Lizzie stayed home in bed) to go Lamb marking about an hour outside Moree. Arrived before sunrise, met the other guys - John's brothers and a few others, and set up the equipment - the racks, a gas tail-cutter etc. Next we got into a pen full of sheep to push them through to a smaller pen, with a little help from a sheep dog, then into a smaller pen ready to be pushed through some gates in order to separate out the lambs. With the lambs in the pen next to the racks everybody got their station...
Lamb catcher - picks lambs up and pins them in the rack.
Ball's remover - Slit's the sack and bites the balls out - no joke.
Tail clipping - um...clips the tail
Lamb Marking - Day 2
.Rear end shearing - er...
Anti-septic sprayer - um...
Of course the boys made sure the first thing Andrew and I had to do was remove some testicles. With our teeth. Not too bad surprisingly, throughout the morning I got used to it and it didn't even seem strange. Still feel sorry for the poor boys as they had to watch their family jewels get ripped from them! Had a go at the other stations and separated out more lambs before getting through the lot by 9.30am and had lunch. Got through over 550 sheep, more tomorrow.
Got back and had a go on the lawn mower, played bowls and had a bar-b-q before getting an early night.
19/10/2008
The girls had to come see what all the talk was about so they got up at 4am with us to go out to the sheep. Much the same today with a couple of alpaca's in the pens that are used to scare away foxes and other predators. Toby came as well, proper little cow boy in his hat, boots and Wranglers
Lamb Marking - Day 2
. Lizzie had a go at the ball biting and got one out!! Then just took over the roll of catching escaped lambs and putting them in the racks. In total we got through about 1400 sheep. 20/10/2008
A lay-in this morning, didn't have to get up until 8 o'clock. Headed down to Bellata for weigh bridge training. Not too difficult and another good feed so can't complain. Got back after lunch and went shopping to get loads of supplies for the next few weeks as we don't know when we'll next get the chance to head into town.
