Seeing Copago's wonderful photos of life on an Australian sheep station has raised some questions which I thought I would post here instead of hijacking the photo thread.

So Jillian, your sheep station is huge by UK standards, and you say you have about 7,500 sheep. At the moment you are shearing which appears to be fairly close to your home - but that is just a guess on my part.

How do you get the sheep to the shearing shed?

Do your sheep roam all over the whole station or do you somehow contain them in areas by fencing?

Is your station fenced all the way around?

lol

Okay, we have 85,000 acres and it is all fenced into about ten paddocks ranging from four to eleven thousand acres. At shearing time we draft all the sheep and seperate them into different groups .. usually ewes, weaners (last years lambs, about a year old) and wethers (castrated males).

There is a smaller paddock for rams. They go out with the sheep from March to June and are put back in their paddock to rest up for next year.

So they hang about in their paddocks and three times a year will be mustered in. In March we 'crutch' which is just taking the wool from around the face and around the bum. The face wool can grow so thick it will cover their eyes (wool blind) and around the bum is to stop it getting wet and dirty and attracting flies.

In June we shear which is all the photos in that thread. All the wool comes off and goes to auction. Usually we have five shearers plus rousabouts who stay here. They bring their own cook (thank you, God!) and stay in the shearer's huts just a hop skip and a jump from our house. The shed is only about 200m from the house. (that's just us though, can change from place to place)

July/August the lambing starts. (awwww!) We pretty much leave them to their own devices for that and at the start of October we bring all the ewes and lambs in again for marking. That's when the lambs are given out ear tag, tails are ringed (so they fall off a week or two later) and the little rams become wethers.

The actual mustering of each bigger paddock will take about five/six hours. We try to have at least four people on motorbikes and just start up one end and spread out and start pushing the sheep towards the end you'll want them. Usually into one of three holding paddocks near to the shed, which is only big enough to hold them for a few days, so they are easy to get when we need them in the yards.

For the rest of the time there is always waters to look after, fences to mend, vehicles and motors to tend and a million other jobs Jack can think of.

Fascinating. Thanks. The sheer size is what amazes me.

This whole island in which I live is 45 square miles so about 28,800 acres and we have almost 100,000 people living here - and a few dozen sheep.

Thanks for asking about that,Sue. I, too, am just fascinated with the whole sheep station experience and I have so enjoyed Jill's pictures of the shearing. I still marvel at the wonders of the internet and how I can vicariously "join in" from all the way around the world!

OK, now a daft question. Why do you castrate most of the baby rams? Is this a quality thing or more practical? Is it that each ram requires multiple ewes?

Hey Sue,

I have spent a lot of time on a farm. The reason they are castrated is because the meat is not as good because of the testosterone if left intact. Rams can cover hundred or more ewes a day. Stand to be corrected on the above. The sheep are penned under the shearing shed sometimes and a bloke made a fortune by going around and scraping out the manure for fertilizer in the cities. Getting nostalgic now. I love the smell of manure in the morning. It is the country.

That's very interesting, Copago. You said that you use motorbikes for rounding up. So does that mean you don't use any dogs at all for assisting?

Edited to add: I have also enjoyed the pictures about station life. With all that is going on, how do you find time for making cards and FT?

Quote:

---

With all that is going on, how do you find time for making cards and FT?

---

... and taking care of a small boy and running his school day, keeping up with the School of the Air programme.
She's a bloomin' wonder!

Not to mention scrapbooking.

ahhh, go on! *embarrased* .... No, seriously, go on! It's just I don't watch much TV so evenings are MY time and then when I do the craft stuff. The other sits and watches TV and I sit in my craft corner and craft.

Sorry for missing the question before, Sue, but MountainGoat seems to have filled you in. Also it stops any possibility of in-breeding too. All our rams are brought from outside the place.

Quote:

---

I love the smell of manure in the morning. It is the country.

---

I'm going to agree with you there, MGoat. There is quite a sweet smell to manure (to non-meating eating animals anyway) that really isn't so bad.

A friend of mine has a successful dairy farm in Shropshire, producing organic milk. The farm covers 400 acres, which is a bit of a difference to an Australian sheep station!
I've often wondered how these vast Australian farms cope with drought, which presumably must be a risk in some areas. Presumably the herd size has to be reduced by slaughter, but is there much demand for adult sheep meat? Then there'd be the huge problem of re-stocking when the drought was over.

Yes it rained too. Maybe the shock of seeing Sue in the nuddies did it. We will never know.

From 2002 til about 5 months ago we were in a shocking drought. Only early this month did we officialy become 'marginal' instead of drought declared. In this area we have an average 9 inch rainfall per year, in 2002 we had less than 3 inches. We ran out of water at the house and had to cart water in tankers for months before we could put in a pipeline. It's almost embarrasing to say the measures we went to to conserve water at the house. Conor was only a tiny baby and we'd only bathe him once every three days (quick wash the other days). Flush the toilet for numbers ones? No way, a splash of disinfectant was what we did there until a number two came along. (which is probably more than you want to know!)

The years since then haven't been so bad but we were only getting enough rain to keep a little bit of grass on the ground but we were getting very short on water. We have seven major watering dams and five of them were bone dry and we had to put in more pipelines from the bore to keep things going. In March there was over three inches of rain in a day which filled everything to the top and them some. We were away at a friend's wedding when that happened and when we got a call to say how much rain there had been I bawled and bawled. Relief plus.

We lost over 75% of the flock which equates to about 5000 sheep. We fed the rams and a mob of ewes but we didn't have the money to be able to do the whole lot. Everyday we had to go to the dams and pull out any that were stuck in the mud and usually destroy them. Hardest thing I'd ever had to do.

Dust storms were a huge problem too. We would get two or three a week. It seemed that the slightest breeze would whip up all the dirt and land it on my house. The is a large hallway that goes up the middle of the house and one night we couldn't see up the other end of it becuase of the dust. And that's inside.

Forgot Clara's question up there. We don't use dogs in the paddocks although many people do. Get a good dog and they will ride on the bike and jump off when they're needed. Problem is I don't have any good dogs. We have three kelpies that are all really like pets although they will work in the yards when we have sheep in. It's magic to watch a good dog in action and they really can be better than a man for those kinds of jobs. Our shearing contractor reckons that if he could teach the dogs to shut the gates he's save a man's wage week.

Right, sorry about that, raved on a bit there!

You made me cry again. I had forgotten just how bad it was for you.

Respect to you and your man! Just ...well done to overcome all that.

I can well understand the emotional aspect of having to destroy stock, and see them suffering too, but I'm quite interested in the practical problems too.
Do you get government assistance in re-stocking, as presumably many other farmers are in the same boat and stock prices must be at a premium.
How do you decide when to re-stock, do you do it quickly, or give it more time?
When foot & mouth disease hit Britain a few years ago, my friend's farm was unaffected, but if even one of the adjacent farms had got the disease, then all of his stock would have had to have been destroyed. He'd have got some finanacial compensation from the government, but his herd is a pedigree herd which has taken many years to breed, and he'd have been 'back to square one'.

Copago, this is a fascinating insight into your life - thank you

no worries, Rowena

Picqero, once an area is drought declared there are all sorts of government subsidies available. Not for buying new stock but there are ones for putting down bores, pipelines, cartage for sending stock to slaughter or to agistment and bringing the latter back, cartage of bringing in hay or other kinds of feed, interest rate subsidies where they'd pay your loan interest for the term of the drought. And there's probably other ones I can't think of right now. Those forms are horrendously complicated but there are even rural financail counsellors that would do all that, they were independant but government funded and they would do the best for you that they could. All extremely helpful and we really are lucky to have that help available when these things happen.

Most of the rural financial banks, or even the mainstream ones that cater to rural loans, would put people on interest only payments so while you so still owe all the money it would be a while before you really have to worry about coming up with the payments. Honestly, if we hadn't been able to take advantage of that and the g'ment subsidy they would have foreclosed on us two years ago. The current affair type shows would relish in the opportunity to show the big mean banks kicking people off farms but I'm sure there was more to those stories, the two banks that we dealt with bent over backwards to make things easier for us (and yeah, to protect their own investment too but still).

On the homefront there was also a drought relief payment that would be equal to the amount of the dole/social payment. So even if it seemed that everything else was crashing down around you there would be that payment come in so you'd at least know you'd have money for the essestial household things. All very handy but Im' so glad we don't have to have it anymore and can stand on our own now!

Here in Western Canada we had a couple of bad drought years followed by the border closing because of BSE. There is government compensation here too - people usually don't lose their place, don't starve to death, but they do often lose bloodlines that have taken as long as a century to build up.

Thanks Copago, I've always reckoned farming is a way of life, rather than simply a means of employment.
My farmer friend once told me that if he sold the farm, complete with stock, outbuildings, vehicles, etc, he'd be able to buy a very nice house, and have nearly as much income from the banked interest as he'd earned from his 80 hour working week!

Good on ya, Copago, for bringing bush life to others.

I grew up on a farm in northern NSW, and it's not an easy life for farmers or their families. From an early age we children helped out - I can remember milking cows at an ungodly hour in the morning, helping with the fencing, feeding the cows - all sorts of stuff. You just got in and got on with it. Whatever needed to be done you did. There was no job/role description, no set meal breaks, long hours and less-than-ideal conditions some days. The best thing - we loved it! You never knew what the day would bring when you got up - sure there were things to be done everyday, but if something cropped up, it went to the top of the list.

I agree with ClaraSue, Ren and Sue - you are amazing, Copago. I think the same of all the wonderful people who work the land producing food and materials for the rest of us.

I take my hat off to each and every one of you!

Wow, this is so interesting.

I was recently reading a thread on another forum from a lady who helps with sheep farming in the Scottish Highlands. THAT was a very different picture!!

Several years ago my friend came over to visit from NSW and we went to Ireland together. Every few miles she would screech to a halt, whip out the camera and take more photos of "the lovely fat sheep" to show her father and brother back home on the farm. They were experiencing severe drought then too.

The size and scale is unimaginable to us here in UK.

I'm heading to OZ next year so hopefully I will get some perspective then!!!!

Quote:

---

I'm heading to OZ next year so hopefully I will get some perspective then!!!

---

Well make sure you get to Sydney, they are complete loonies the FT crowd, but ever so welcoming!