Doughboy - our wandering bull

Our bull, Doughboy, has been a bit naughty over the last few months, and has started testing the fences and going on to neighbouring properties. We got a call from the stock squad a couple of weeks ago to say he had wandered on to another property, which ended up being a neighbours property.

They have been using molasses traps to catch the steers on their property, and Doughy can smell molasses from miles away. So he has broken through our fences to get over to the molasses, and keeps getting caught in their yards - which then means they can't catch their own cattle! They dropped him back for us, but he quickly disappeared again.

After looking for him for a few days while we have been up at the farm, I rang them to see if they had him again, and they did, so we arranged to go to the property they have taken him to, to keep him out of their molasses traps, about 30 klms from here. So yesterday Damian headed out to pick him up. In the meantime, the owners of the other property were rounding him up for us, Hugh...the owner, who is 73, has ended up having an accident on his quad bike, coming off, passing out and having to be choppered in to the local hospital! Nothing is bloody quiet around here! He has ended up having a few broken ribs, punctured a lung and bruising. He was actually very lucky. Quad bikes can be so dangerous, even if you know how to ride them.

Apparently, the news has been in contact with them today, and their grand-daughter has been giving interviews about children ringing 000, as she is 9 years old, and the one who rang the ambulance.

(Hugh being loaded in to the chopper for the ride to hospital)

We are so glad he is ok,  He has left hopsital today, and is managing well.  We have been up at the farm since the Thursday before Easter, and I was due to head back today, but I have been sick since last Friday, waves of headaches and nausea, and ended up going to bed at 4pm yesterday and was not up to the 4 hour drive back to Brisbane today.  Not sure when I will head back yet, probably will spend another day or 2 up here and then head back. I want to do some painting in the kitchen here, and we have been having a big clean out here, and clearing out bits and pieces from the shed while we have been here. Well, I better go and make sure the bull is behaving himself and hasn't wandered off again!

Year 6 Graduation Dinner and Dance..

I've been getting in to trouble from my Mother for not keeping my blog updated, sorry Mother :) so I thought I had better stop being a slacker and update it ;). A LOT has happened in the last few months, including a move back down to Brisbane, as work died off immensely up at the farm township, so decisions had to be made.  A lot of people up there have been affected by a lot of mines closing and money is pretty short, which of course has a flow on effect on small businesses such as ours. We still have the farm, and the cattle, we just have to head up every few weeks to take stock of what's happening up there. We still also have our business up there, we have put a casual guy on to do the jobs that come in, and I am running that part of things from down here, and Damian has gone back to project managing for a company down here...regular income is lovely.

Anyway, tonight is a big night for our youngest, Kasey has her year 6 dinner and dance tonight. This is the first year they have put on such an event, and the kids are all really looking forward to it. Kasey spent weeks designing her outfit, then we had to provide the $ to make it all come together...lol... but she looks beautiful, and is looking forward to a great night.

Snakes are definitely out and about...

I have had a run in with 3 in the last week. The first - I was pruning back my arrowroot plants and throwing some over the fence to the cattle, as they absolutely love it. All of the plants are about 2 metres tall, so I was tucked right in the plant chopping it back, when my eyes focused on something moving, and when it came in to focus, it was a dark brown snake slithering past my face about 4 inches in front of me.  I know they say you are meant to stay still, but, stuff that,  I was out of there...before I knew it I was in the middle of the house yard on my knees, wondering what the hell had just happened. It had also jumped out of the tree and was high tailing it out of there as well. I think I shuddered for about an hour or 2, and made myself a nice strong drink to try and get over it all. The second was a couple of days later, I could hear little Sam barking and barking, and I went out to investigate, and I could see a few toads gathering in behind the bins. I was muttering away to myself while I was fetching the dettol to spray them all, about how much I hate toads, and how they attract snakes etc, and as I came back to spray them, I noticed a black snake in there as well. So armed with my broom and my shovel, just in case, I started pulling things out to try and shoo it out of there. It ducked underneath the corrugations on the end of the verandah back out in to the yard, so I am hoping it stays away now. And then 2 days later another crossed my path on the driveway as I was leaving for work. It was black, but I think it had a yellowy greeny belly from what I could see, so I am thinking it was a tree snake. I didn't see it until I was just about on top of it, so I couldn't stop in time, but I didn't run it over, as I noticed it slithered away when I checked in my rear vision mirror.

In the last 12 months, the only snakes I have seen was a red bellied black in the chook pen about 6 weeks ago, which the guinea fowl chased away,  and a tree snake down at the cattle yards at about the same time, so to see so many, so close together, is unusual. I really hope this heat goes away soon so that they can all start to hibernate over the winter. They are definitely around in droves at the minute, so be careful, watch where you are walking and where you put your hands and your feet while gardening etc.

A big day of cattle handling...and another chicken processing day

The new heifers and bull calves are all about 8 months old now, so it was time to round them all up and brand them, needle them and castrate any bull calves, and put all of their NLIS tags in. We organised for a musterer to come in and he and his dogs rounded them all up and in to the yards. We put all the mothers through as well, as it was time for worming for all of them anyway. The musterer is an experienced cattle handler, so we organised for him to bring his brand heater etc so we could brand them all. He also castrated the 3 bull calves while he was there. It was a hot day, but it all got done.  We had a few very angry cows to deal with as well, so it can be a bit dangerous at times, and you have to keep your wits about you so you don't get hurt, they are very big and can be very dangerous if you get in their way.

 

I felt so bad for the cattle, but it is very quick, and they don't seem at all worried about it as soon as they are let out of the crush. The little bull calves all handled their castration really well too, it just amazes me that they just stand there, no reaction whatsoever, and then they just wander out of the crush like nothing has happened. This little bullcalf (the darker one at the front) has just been castrated, and he is just standing around here, completely calm, and oblivious to what has just happened to him.

We are hoping to send a few of the heifers off to the sales as breeders in May, along with some of the older cows as well for breeders, as we don't want to go in to winter again with too many cattle. We would eventually like to get down to about 6 heifers and 1 bull, with maybe a few steer to grow out each year. We're never going to make a lot of money out of cattle on 150 acres, so it is just to keep the grass down really.
The next day we also processed all of the excess roosters, we had 6 in total to do, not a nice job, but it has to be done. They were all just starting to harass the girls, and fight with each other, so the time had come. So 6 birds in the freezer, I roasted one up, much nicer when they are younger, as opposed to the older ones we did a while back which were all tough,  I managed to eat a little bit, but still not sure if I can do this eating our own chickens thing..

2015....ok....I'm getting ready for you....slowly.

I have been away from the farm for 5 weeks and I have come home to an overgrown jungle. It's amazing how much the rain affects things, and how much better the landscape is once we get some. The property goes from depressing and dusty, to lush, green and full of life. The rain has been wonderful. The tanks are full, the dam is overflowing and  there is lots of grass in the paddocks and the cows are looking full and happy. LOTS of weeding to be done... This arrowroot plant has more than doubled in size in 5 weeks and is now over 2 metres tall!

 

Everything has grown so much, Damian got back to the farm 2 weeks earlier than me, and he came home to our small front yard looking like this:

My gardens are in there somewhere! He even resorted to bringing in the heavy artillery to bring the grass down to a mow-able level.

I have managed to make a small dent in the weeding, and the grass is back to being nice and mowed, now with the added benefit of being green and lush. The rain makes the weeds fairly easy to pull out as well, even though when I was weeding yesterday I got stung by a nasty wasp...nevermind, I am loving the rain! In the 2 years we have been here, the only good rain we have had was from the floods in Jan 2013, so to have had some regular rain, and to have our tanks full again has been fantastic.
While down in Brisbane, we made the house quite Christmassy and even put up a few outside lights this year!

It was  Grace's 1st birthday party on the weekend, this first year has gone so quickly. It was ridiculously hot, but Grace had a great day.

We did a visit to Lollipop Land at Old Petrie Town before coming home, I took Kasey and her best friend Bethany for a day out. It is about "Lollipop Land" a town of the North Pole where all of the lollies and sweet things are made for the world at Christmas time. It is only held for a few more days, so if you haven't had a chance, go and see the displays before they disappear, as they won't be back until the end of the year. The show is put on by doll maker Chris Boston, and visual display artist Jule, from Whimsical Imaginings.

So, now we're back at the farm and Kasey is back at school next week... Time to get back in to the swing of things and see what 2015 brings...

The bath tub brooder..

A friend gave Damian 24 fertilised eggs a few weeks back, all the light sussex breed. So in to the incubator they went. They are all hatching at the moment, and so far we have got 18 hatched and another 1 on the way. One has died in it's shell, and the remaining 4 haven't shown any signs of doing anything yet, so we're not holding out for those to hatch. It is day 21 today, so we'll see. That's probably one of the best hatching rates we've had to date. The person who gave us the eggs said he spritzes the eggs with water in the last couple of days to keep the shells moist, so we tried this along with the higher humidity we normally do in the last 3 days, so not sure if this is the reason why we have ended up with a higher than normal hatch rate, but we'll certainly do that again.
I usually put the chicks in a large cage I have here with the brooder light, but the chicks flick the wood shavings all over the ground, and it makes a really big mess. The man who gave us the eggs says he uses an old bathtub as a brooder, which we thought was a great idea, and we have a few old baths around here, so Damian set about making a stand and putting a mesh lid on the bath, and......ta dah!

He has made it nice and high for easy access, and to keep the dogs out of it. He also cut a hole in the mesh at the top for the brooder light to be able to poke through so we can keep it high enough for them. They seem nice and happy in their temporary home.

These 2 have hatched in the last couple of hours, with another one on the way, which is the egg on the right with the pip marks in it....

We went to the markets this morning to get some fruit and veg, and I picked up the huge basket full of lettuce and herbs for  $8!!   I thought that was way too cheap, but apparently that is what she sells them for.

I just got back from a week in Brisbane with the big kids yesterday afternoon, and friends of ours on the Sunshine Coast did a big garden clean out while I was down there, and gave away all of their agaves, so I went and picked up some of what they had, and planted a few down in Brisbane and the rest will be planted up here...it's about the only type of plants that grow well here at the moment, hopefully as Damian now has the bore sprinklers working it will keep things a bit more lush and green and we will be able to have better luck with the gardens. I also did a big garden clean up while in Brisbane and pulled out a heap of wild iris, and bought just a fraction of them back up to plant here as well.

So, lots of planting to be done over the long weekend. Kasey had a fantastic week at her horse riding camp and is looking forward to going again, I said she may be able to go to one of the Xmas holiday camps. She was keen to show me how much she has learnt today, as she can also do a rising trot now, so she saddled up her horse and we went down to the yards for her to have a ride. Unfortunately, her horse had a flip out on her again, and bucked her off.....again...so Kasey promptly announced she is never riding Magic again, to which I said, "I don't blame you, I wouldn't ride her again either", ...so we are on the hunt now for an OLD plodder for her....she wasn't hurt, she has a grazed elbow, but that seems to be all, luckily. Poor kid....We also seemed to have solved the crow problem, we have closed the doors in to the house area of the chook pen, and there is a small access door that the chooks use to go inside. Since closing the doors, we are no longer losing any eggs, so the fridge is finally starting to fill up with eggs again. Next project here for me will be for Damian to build be a small corrugated vegie garden with a shade cloth roof so I can grow some vegies, it's too hot without the shadecloth, so I am hoping I have some success with growing some veg again sometime soon.

Two new additions...

Our girls are finally starting to have their babies. 2 have come along in the last 2 days...
A gorgeous, tiny little girl...soooo tiny, and looks just like her mum

And then this bully little bull calf...

I think he is going to end up just like his Dad....Mum's and bubs are doing well, and doing all the right things....there should be some more coming along soon as well hopefully as there are some fat looking girls wandering around...

The rain arrived...

Thank goodness. We received about 150mm between Tuesday and Friday, which has provided a much needed lifeline to the property. Our dam which was bone dry with cracked parched earth only on Monday is now full.

There is green grass tinged across the property, and the ground has soaked up the rain with relish. Our tanks didn't get filled up this time, but they should both be about 3/4 full now...we are so grateful that we got some rain, we were dreading that we weren't going to get any decent rain until the end of the year. Hopefully we will get some more follow up rain to really give the grass a good boost before the winter cold sets in so that the cows have a good supply of winter feed, especially as we have a few more cows to still have bubs yet. I hope that lots of people got much needed rain out of this.

Tagging the cattle and improving the yards

We spent our weekend here out in the heat, doing some work outside. I am not a fan of summer, I would rather do things outside from autumn through to spring when it's cooler. Damian had to hire a dingo digger to do a plumbing job on Saturday, so we hired it for the weekend and did some things around here. He dug some trenches to bury the poly coming from the dam up to the top tank underground, he also ran a trench from the tanks to the chook pen so I have water there instead of lugging buckets of water over each day. We also dug LOTS of holes for future use, for planting trees etc or burying the odd chicken that dies. We dug holes down at the cattle yards for the corner and strainer posts to build our laneway in to our cattle yards. Most of our cattle will go in to the yards fairly easily with a molasses bribe, but we have a few that refuse so by having the laneway, we hope to be able to force them in a lot easier. We got 2 sections of fencing done, and just have one more run of about 50 metres to do to finish them off.
Our cattle are also being plagued by buffalo flies at the moment, and were due for worming again. A few came in to the yards while we were working down there, so I ran them through the crush and wormed and tagged them. I put hot pink ear tags in to identify them as ours easily from a distance, and I also put insecticidal ear tags in to treat them for flies. I put 4 girls through and the bull. We have 14 to go, so will try and do them one afternoon this week. It makes it so much easier by ear tagging them as I know which ones I have wormed and which ones I haven't. It was very hot, but we achieved a lot.

(Hertie Gertie, our mini hereford, after tagging)

We got just under 30mm of rain here last Thursday, so the cows should have a bit of green pick to eat now hopefully. They have all lost condition over the last few months of dry weather, and with the flies giving them a hard time, they were starting to struggle.
The rest of this week will be spent working on finishing off Christmas presents, and then we will head down to Brisbane on Sunday or Monday to spend some time down there and spend Christmas with family.

Craft studio makeover...part 1...from ugly duckling....

We bought this used site office last year to convert in to a studio/office/spare room, for up here on the farm.  Currently it is UGLY !!!....ugly...ugly...ugly...

The inside was even worse, it had that horrible woodgrain panelling on the inside walls, which had been haphazardly painted over, there was a big hole where the air conditioner had been, and while transporting it up here on the tilt tray, part of the inside ceiling caved in....oops...
So, on the weekend we started with the inside renovation. It has now been reinforced, some of the timber studs replaced and braced, and  re-lined with fibre cement sheeting, and is now ready for the cornice, skirting and arcitraves, then painting. We didn't go with gyprock walls, as the whole building is on skids, and if we want to relocate it, we can do so without risk of cracking the gyprock joins. It was a struggle with just the 2 of us putting up the ceiling sheets, but Damian rigged up a couple of support poles to hold the sheets at either end, which made life a lot easier. Trying to slot each sheet in to the previous sheets joining strip was the hardest part of the whole exercise.

Once it is all painted, I will get in some nice wooden floorboard look vinyl to finish it off, and dress the window with timber blinds. It will then be ready for me to move all of my craft cupboards and sewing gear in to. Oh..and I suppose I had better leave a little bit of room for the sofa bed, so that we can use it for guest accomodation when needed.... ;0)
We already have the outside cladding here, which I bought to clad the front of our shouse with, and we have so much of it left over, we will have enough to clad various chook pens, and any other structures or sheds in the future. I bought the whole lot 2nd hand for $200 which was an absolute bargain. So the whole studio will be clad the same as this, a cream weatherboard look cladding.

Damian is planning on re-roofing it over the next week or two and then putting the cladding on. We got brand new zincalume roof sheets for nothing from one of our suppliers who had ordered the wrong lengths in for a customer, and Damian was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time...score.   So it should turn from the ugly duckling into a beautiful swan very soon hopefully. Damian is down in Brisbane this week on a course, we thought we would take the opportunity while he is not working to get a couple of extra licences added on to his plumbing licence, so he is currently finishing off his gas licence qualification so that we can have that as part of our offering here in town for when we open up our shopfront in a couple of weeks in the main street of town. We have to build and fit out an office and racking etc down there as well, and he also has to head back and forth to Brissie quite a bit over the next few weeks to finish his course...he is going to be a very busy boy....I don't think he has time at the moment to work in a paying job! Luckily, in the overall scheme of things we have worked very hard over the last 5-6 years especially,  setting ourselves up so that we aren't in a bad financial position, but we still have bills to pay like everyone, but because of forward planning, hopefully we should be right to manage (very frugally) while we give this new business in town a good go, and luckily Damian is very handy with building things, so we don't have to outsource any of the building work.

The year is flying by....

Things have been a little crazy here over the last month or so. The days are going so quickly, and it's been very busy. I can't believe we are nearly half way through the year already. I went to Ann's scrapbooking retreat in May at Kilcoy. Managed to get a few pages done, was a bit off my mojo though, so didn't get as many as usual done, I procrastinated a lot, but I had a nice break. I travelled down with a girl friend, and we went the scenic route on the way down, and stopped at a lovely cheese shop at Goomeri and bought some beautiful cheeses and pastes to indulge in over our weekend. These are the few pages I did:

Kasey feeding some poddy calves at a friend's place.

 These are a couple of my favourite photos. I hired a truck to pick up a lounge I bought off ebay, and Toni came with me to help me load it up. The first photo was when we were about to set off on our way...while we were loading the lounge, it bucketed down on us, drenching us both, the 2nd photo is the after shot...

 Then I thought I would do a few pages with lots of photos to get through some of my huge stash of pics, the first was of my chickens:

 This page is still of my chickens, but this was a class we did  on the Saturday morning, the photo's are on flaps which open out, revealing lots more photos underneath.

 Then this page was of a visit we did to the Flying High bird sanctuary, Kasey wasn't real keen on the bird on her shoulder

 This pic is of our gorgeous pups

 This page was based on the chicken page, and also has lift up flaps depicting lots of things from our farm

 I loved doing this page, very simple but elegant at the same time, depicting a morning scene here on the farm

The puppies are doing well. I have finally managed to get Stella putting on some weight, she has finally hit the 2kg mark and she is coming out of her shell more and more each week. Here they are curled up together on the lounge.

Sam has the biggest personality. He is so cheeky and loveable. He loves to play in the dirt, and even though he is white, he manages to clean himself up quite well...especially considering when he does this:

We also did a weekend holiday over to Fraser Island with 3 other families, even though it was only from Friday through to Sunday, we had a great time. I had a local animal carer come in and feed and look after the animals for me, which made things a lot easier.

I had a clutch of araucana's ready to hatch when I got back from Fraser, I had 2 hatch out and then Max knocked the incubator off the bench where it was, and the 2 that had hatched survived, but a number of others cracked and either weren't fertile, or were dead, and the rest did not end up hatching...so I only ended up with 2 out of the 9 eggs...seems to be the way it is for me, only a small number...I hope I can improve on that in spring. I have got a couple of big tubs now set up with some lettuce, silverbeet and shallots growing, and a few cabbage planted in the garden.

  I hope to plant up 1 or 2 more tubs of vegies, but I don't want to go overboard at this stage, just a little at a time. We have also purchased our first bull, a purebred registered Droughtmaster, he is due to arrive tomorrow. He is a lovely quiet boy, and he has been tested for fertility as well, so I hope he is easy for us to manage. The heifers we have here are all at the age where they are ready to breed, and I will put him over our Jersey as well, to get her started also. We chose the Droughtmasters for a number of reasons, and the small calf size was a big swing for us as well with the first time heifers. We hope to sell the calves once they are about 6 months old, and start to build up a purebred droughtmaster herd. I had a big de-clutter session here last Friday, as we just don't have the room here to hoard stuff, so I got rid of old magazines and general bits and pieces, and de-cluttered the bathroom as well and re-arranged things a little. I still have to finish off my decorating. I requested and received a Kreg drill jig for Mothers Day, so I will start to build myself a few bits and pieces to decorate with. Damian has also started doing up my craft studio, but I think that will take a few more weeks yet, as we have had a few weekends away. Anyway, I think that is all for a bit of a catchup for now...hopefully the bull arrives tomorrow and I can post a few pics then...