Well it’s been a little while since I’ve done a farming blog, and with the end of the year rapidly approaching I thought that I should really get onto doing a wrap up of how our spring has been. It’s easily been our busiest time of year with the tail end of lambing, cropping, weaning and finally shearing all happening!!
We were super happy with how our lambing season went, as we ended up with an average lambing % of around 180% across all the age groups we have here on our farm (this excludes the hoggets – first year lambers). Our hoggets ended up with a lambing % of around 150% which again we were absolutely stoked about. The aim is to always have at least 100% lambing rate with the hoggets as they are the future of our breeding herd and anything above this is a huge bonus.
We were lucky in that we had a relatively mild Spring, although our usual westerly winds came for most of it which are never fun. Our farm is located a little bit inland from the West Coast and due to our altitude and hill ranges we do experience a strong westerly wind for near enough all of Spring and sometimes into Summer as well. We were very grateful that we got rain when we wanted it and sunshine when we needed it too. I think as farmers you never stop worrying about the weather, particularly with our system where we are quite reliant on the weather playing the game. It’s a year-round concern, but more so in the early Spring when we have all the baby lambs being born. And as they are a main income source for our farm the more that survive the better.
Following the end of lambing we were full swing into cropping both here and at the other farm. I think Dad and Freddie put down about 150 acres of turnips in about 5 days!! There were some very long evenings and early starts to get the crops in before the rain but they managed to get it done which was awesome. We plant turnips to be used as a summer safe feed for our stock, so that in the event that we have a dry summer we have enough feed to keep them full and happy. We have also cut some silage as well which may also come in handy if things get dry over the summer like they are predicting.
Once all the crops were in we then moved onto the start of weaning, which I’m sure the ewes were thrilled about! Due to the mild Spring and the grass growing like mad we were really happy with how the lambs had grown and we are hopeful that they will continue to grow well off mum before they get sent away. As our lambing is staggered over a few months we start weaning with the early lambers (5 and 6-year-old ewes) and continue with it over the course of a couple of months as well. This means that our late lambs have the same amount of time on mum as the early lambs do, which in theory hopefully means that they grow to be a similar weight when weaned. We also weaned 3 of our pet lambs, with the final 2 hopefully being weaned by Christmas!
And finally, with weaning also comes shearing! We typically do main shear more towards Christmas time but due to last summer being a bit drier than we would have liked and the ewes being in a slightly lighter condition, we decided not to do a pre-lambing shear and leave their wool on to keep them a bit warmer before and during lambing. This has then in turn meant that our ewes have come into the end of Spring/start of Summer with a thicker fleece than usual so to keep them happy we did an earlier shearing. Because no one wants to be running around in a thick woolen coat in the summer sun!! So now all our ewes are completely bikini body ready for the summer! As we get a bit closer to the middle of summer we will also shear our lambs, this again has the same principle as the ewes in that we don’t want them running around in the hot summer sun with their thick woolly coats on! It definitely means we have happier animals in the summer heat which in turn means happy farmers!
We didn’t get away from the farm too much during the Spring, mainly as we were still recovering from our big trip to Canada and also because it is the busiest time of the year for us on farm. We are hoping to have a couple of weekends away for some weddings and a bit of a vacay once we properly get into summer but that will most likely be in the New Year sometime! Crazy to think that we are almost at the beginning of a new decade, I’m not sure where this last year has gone so it will be interesting to see how the new year and the new decade goes!
The end of Spring also came with the arrival of my horses to the farm. They had been living down at my parents place as that was where I was living before we moved here in June. I had aimed to have them here with me A LOT sooner than what occurred but I don’t actually know where time has gone this year and before I knew it, we were in November and the horses still weren’t here! But they have finally arrived and I am honestly so thrilled to have them here with me. It’s made the farm feel even more like home again and it also means I’m not having to drive 30 minutes to go for a ride! Which is a big game changer!! The move here has also come with the difficult decision to retire Diva from competition jumping, long story short she had an accident and hasn’t been the same since with her jumping. I will mostly likely do a blog post about this some more but at the end of the day her health and wellbeing is my main priority! But she is LOVING going out for hacks around the farm and generally just chilling out so it is lovely to see her so happy!
Bob, Percy & Bill…three of our pet lambs
Lambing beat with Archie as chief helper
Sunset while cropping was going on
The view over looking one of our newly cropped turnip paddocks
Ewes in the yards ready for shearing time
Rum and Diva admiring their new paddock view
But that pretty much sums up our springtime on the farm for 2019, if you have any questions for me around lambing, weaning or shearing please just let me know! I’d be more than happy to answer them for you! And alternatively, if you too are from a farm I’d love to know if you do things differently and why! Until next time!
Talk soon,
L-J x
