Jock & Peppa at play (With Photo's)

This afternoon I decided to take Jock and Peppa for a run. I'm in the process of pulling fences down, so the dogs have almost the entire property to run in.

After a quick dash around the grassy paddock, I took them over to the dam for a drink. Just a drink.

This is what happened.

No cajolling by Peppa will convince Jock that the water is as lovely as she says it is.

This photo is probably the one and only time I will get a photo of these two remotely behaving themselves!

Jock is very switched on to me, and will pad along quietly beside or behind me. He's never far away, unless I cast him out on sheep. Peppa is a totally different story. She couldn't care less if I'm there or not, and will happily go wandering all by herself. She almost seems offended if I call her back!

That's the difference between Pack Raised, and Human Raised.

Jock is happy by my side, Peppa has exploring to do, and if I choose to tag along I should just stay out of her way whilst she's busy!

Don't forget to visit my Store! All proceeds to go to purchasing sheep for these two to work!
http://astore.amazon.com/geitenbeeksho-20

When the weather is nice (with photo's)

Now that we are coming into winter, I've been looking through the photo's to see what's there, and remembering those lovely warm days.

Below are a couple of them:

Pippa (White Boxer), either teaching or trying to drown Peppa (BC Bitch Puppy)

 It wont get stuck he says, I think he was wrong! We used my old Range Rover to unbog this Range Rover, again!

 When you cant pull the suction hose out of the dam from the edge, there's only one thing for it. Make yourself a raft and paddle out to the middle using a leaf rake. My son James enjoyed this, however he did get a little wet in the bottom department!

 This little patchy ram lamb was one of triplets. Their mum, Aretha, raised them all without help from us!

 

A lovely double rainbow just up the hill from our place. The large gum tree to the left of the photo is no-longer after a lightning strike, causing the Wedge Tailed Eagles to find a new nesting tree.

Again guys, remember to check out my store!

http://astore.amazon.com/geitenbeeksho-20

Every dollar raised goes to buying some more sheep so Jock (and young Peppa) have stock to work!

A New Puppy (with Photo's)

Late last year I embarked on a search for a Border Collie Bitch Puppy.

After some ringing around, and lots of waiting, I came across this gorgeous little girl, who my daughter named Peppa. Probably not the best name in the world, given that our old White Boxer is called Pippa. I didn't really see the harm in it though, given that Pippa rarely answers to her name!

Below are a couple of photo's of the day we picked little Miss Peppa up.

Enjoy

This little girl is an April Fools baby, born on the 1st April 2013.

A New Year (With Photo's)

Well, so much has happened since I last posted up a blog, so I'll try to recap it all for you.

Jock has worked his little paws to the bone keeping control of our sheep, at least, that was until we sold them all.

We went from 60 something ewes and lambs, down to 15, and now we have none.

However, before we sold the sheep, Jock was really kept on his toes. We're doing a lot of earthworks in the paddocks here at the moment so it was necessary to move the sheep around quite a bit to keep the grass under control and keep them in dry conditions. The earth works we are doing are primarily to divert all of the excess water we get over winter which normally drowns out paddocks!

Anyway, here are a few photo's that I took of Jock in various poses, pushing sheep, holding sheep and cooling off in the dam, on a freezing cold day!

Also, to help raise some money to buy more sheep now that the earthworks are under way, I've opened an eStore:

http://astore.amazon.com/geitenbeeksho-20

All proceeds with go towards buying another handful of sheep to continue Jocks work!

Filing lambs under documents! (With PHOTO)

My previous post tells of the story of the two little orphaned lambs in my lounge room. Before they made it to my lounge, they were in a document box, snuggled up to a heat pack next to my chair.

See photo:

The lamb at the top of the box is a ewe lamb, the lamb at the bottom of the box (with the big white stripe down the head) is a ram.
They have now graduated to a larger box, which, ironically was the box our lamb marking cradle arrived in!

A day turned upside down.............

Today was the first day in about a week or so that the weather was going to play nice.

This means that things we've had to put off recently can now be done, namely drenching the sheep and trimming their feet up as well.

So, by about lunchtime we are all set. Just as I was about to get properly organised, we had a visitor. Not too bad, the visitor is a nice guy and always up for a chat. He's also a wealth of information when it comes to sheep, so I pick his brains on a regular basis.

Whilst we were chatting, my daughter came and told me that the twins (lambs) were on the wrong side of the fence from their mum. Off I go to rescue them, AFTER turning the electric fence off first. These little guys were constantly trying to go through the fence and were being zapped every couple of seconds.

After a quick rescue, it was back to my cuppa whilst we continue chatting.

My daughter then comes to me and says the two lambs I rescued are down the bottom of the paddock and can't get up.

Off I go at a job, only to get about 30 feet away from them to discover that it is two little newborns. They can't get up because they have only just been born. I back away slowly and make my way back to my, now almost cold, cuppa.

Well, that changes the plans a little. No rounding up the ewes today which means no drenching and no feet trimming. It can wait.

After about two hours I notice that the ewe that has just lambed has abandoned her babies. They are calling and she seems oblivious to them. The little girl struggles to her feet and makes her way over to her mum, only to be shunted away.

This is not good.

It was decided that I would catch the lambs, dry them off (they still had sac all over them) and put them in the sunshine. As I was drying them off, they started complaining, so their mum started coming over. A good sign, or so I thought. Instead of licking them, or even talking to them, she proceeded to headbutt them. I stepped in and picked them both up.

We decided to separate her from the mob and put her in a pen with her lambs. Usually this is enough for the ewes to decide that they are going to look after their lambs. Instead of this happening, the ewe set about stepping on, and headbutting her lambs. I scooped them up, brought them inside and gave them some brown sugar in water.

I wanted to give them a boost, but I knew they hadn't had colostrum so I didn't hold out much hope. I relented and gave them a 1/8 mix of lamb milk replacer.

About an hour after that, my son (17yo) came out and we caught the ewe and put the lambs on to drink. They weren't strong enough, so my daughter brought out a jug and I proceeded to milk a very irate ewe. She kicked constantly and almost got her lambs a couple of times.

It's now 8:35PM and the lambs are in a box in my lounge room. They have had about 30 mls of colostrum each, and three feeds of lamb milk replacer (about 100mls) each. Snuggled up to a heat pack, these little guys (guy and girl) seem content and quite happy.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they survive.

They'll get another feed or two tonight, and I'll milk the ewe again in the morning before turning her back out with the mob. If they make two weeks old, I might just give them each a name.

A Marathon day!

Today is the first official day of the school holidays here, and we've already been flat out.

Today was the day to drench all of the ewes, and to bring the older lambs (and ram) up into a pen (mainly to keep them out of the way lol).

The job fell to Jock to bring the lambs and ram up first. The ram has been worked many times, but this was only the second time for the lambs. Obviously the telling off they got from Jock yesterday carried some weight because they all stayed together today. He had the job done within about 5 minutes of starting, which is a record.

Next we had to bring the ewes and lambs up. That involved fetching them out of a paddock, pushing them through two more and into a small paddock that has the yard. Then get them all into the yard. Again, Jock did this beautifully. He pushed steadily and got the job done.

The best part is, the work I had done with him about 2 months ago on "driving" has paid off, because today he was walking about 6 feet ahead of me, and about 15 feet to my left pushing the sheep into the yards, whilst I got ready with the panel to close in behind them. It was done perfectly!

Jock is still rather too enthusiastic when it comes to the sheep, and gets in too close, however he does get the job done.

I am going to have to work on a few things with him though. First he needs to stop trying to bolt off around the sheep when we first get into the paddock. I want him to wait until I am ready, so that's step one.

Number 2 is, when the training pen is put back up, I'm going to spend quite a bit of time getting Jock to widen out. He's coming in really close now and it's no good for working the lambs, so he HAS to back off.

That'll be worked on over time in the Spring and Summer, which is still a couple of months away!

So, thanks Jock for your help today, and to my husband and kids for their help as well. The best part is (I think), is we get to do it all again in a weeks time! Hopefully next time I'll be able to supply photo's.