Lamb Photos
Well, all those statistics are all very well, but I forgot to include the most important thing - pictures of lambs! They photos are not in order but at least they are not covering each other!

Lambs 2010
I think that all the ewes that are going to lamb have lambed. The outcome is five healthy, strong lambs (3 girls and 2 boys). At the time of lambing I had 19 sheep, 15 girls. Of these 15 girls only 11 lambed and they had a total of 15 lambs including 4 sets of twins. Of these 10 died, either from being weak or from foxes. That isn't a very good lambing rate. I don't know whether this is due to very high fox numbers or that Bobby just isn't doing his job or that maybe he needs help. Who knows. I have included a table of our births and losses, more for my record than anything else. Also, now that Spotty-Ears has died (my second favourite, very sad) I only have 18 sheep in all (including Rambo, the ram, who I will have to sell pretty soon).
I guess that sums it all up. At shearing time we will mark, ring the tails and tag them and then they'll be part of my growing flock. So, I guess the next question is, which ones will be eaten?

April / May / June Update
Mum and Dad visited again in late April. Dad mowed the 'tree' run down the middle of the paddocks and sprayed the blackberries around the dam and under the plum trees. Unfortunately, I can't find the photographs I'm sure I took of the mown tree run and the before and after photos of the blackberries around the dam. In early May the cows started getting through to the next door neighbours at the top of the hill. I went up there to investigate and sure enough the fence that I thought was okay was falling apart. I had no trouble getting Jemma and her calf to come through the adjoining gate and then I spent over an hour pulling up the hinge joint and attaching to the star pickets and putting in dropper wires to hold the whole thing together. And so another fence survives for a bit longer.
Although not farm news, in the middle of May I bought new bedroom furniture. I shuffled the house a bit and put my double bed into the guest room for Mum and Dad and put the futon into Steve's old bedroom. I now have a Federation style queen bed, side drawers, dresser and tallboy and I'm very pleased with myself.
In the middle of June Coco's coat was torn and half coming off. Because of this Bobby was attacking her because he saw her as a threat, either because she was stressed or the noise the coat was making dragging on the ground. Anyway, we got the sheep into the yards and put on a new coat. At the same time Russell helped me clip some sheep nails. Because Bobby wouldn't let up on Coco we had to separate the sheep into two groups in different paddocks to keep Bobby apart from Coco for a week until he settled down.
At the end of June when Mum and Dad were visiting again, Dad and Russell helped me mend the back western fence adjoining our neighbours. They had a steer all by himself enticing my cows over to play. Ten star pickets and loads of wire later we patched the fence enough to keep them home in the short term.
I have included a few photographs taken of the farm during April, May and June.