Rudi to the Butchers

While I had the cows in the yards for tagging, etc. the calves it was a good opportunity to send Rudi to the butchers.  He was collected on Monday morning and was no trouble at all.  We collected his meat on the Friday two weeks following.  From a carcass weight of 356.2kg I only received 176.63kg of meat, which is 49.59% and much less than previous steers.  The butcher said this was because Rudi had a lot of fat wastage, although his meat was marbled, which is supposed to be a good thing.  The total cost was $767.15, including freight to the butchers.

Buying Water & Broken Pipe

In October the tank at the top of the hill was almost empty as there had not been enough rain to pump from the shed tank, so buying water was the next option.  Unfortunately, not long after this I lost the lot due to a broken pipe.  After a bit of work and fiddling I mended the pipe and then managed to get the electric pump working to pump from the front dam (with a bit of help).  I have pumped a few times from the front dam now, plus one pump from the shed tank after about 12ml of rain.

  (I have included a picture of the path mown for the water guy and the mended pipe.  After the photo I filled the hole and secured the stand pipe to a star picket for support, so it wasn't broken again.)

Snow in October

The day after Smokey was born it snowed!  I have included a photograph of the cows in the snow and snow on the chopped pine tree.

Four Calves

At the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012 I had my three cows and two heifers artifically inseminated.  Tawnie and Blackie, my two heifers, were the first to calve on 14 and 18 September.  Then Brownie had her calf (Zorro) on 20 September.  Sandy (with Smokey) was the last on 11 October.  Jemma didn't calf at all, which was disappointing.

Before the new year really starts, I thought I had better finish off summarising the events for the second half of 2012.

2012 Lambs

I moved the sheep to the ‘Far East’ paddock and took stock of which ewes had lambs.  There were eight new lambs, so including the three from earlier this year in January and March that’s 11 lambs and a total of 29 sheep including lambs.  Even Spotty Nose had another lamb this year and she would be close to ten years old.  At shearing time when we tagged and marked the lambs, I was pleased to see that there were 3 boys and 8 girls, and some of the boys will stay as merino wethers.