Our first Murray Greys

We'd like to have a few Murray Grey cattle as our meat producers. We can sell or eat the male calves and keep the females until we have around 10-15 cattle here.
We bought a pair of two week old heifer calves today and here are their photos. They'll have to be feed milk for a few weeks still (up to about 12 weeks). Meat cattle aren't weaned as early as dairy cattle since their mothers milk isn't being competed for.


  ¶ 5:12 PM

  Our 1st Wool Cheque!!!!
I took our wool clip to the local wool merchants today.
It weighted all of 13Kg and being crossbreds, didn't earn top dollar :(

Gross $29.90
Net: $29.28 after the AFFA (Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Australia ) and AWEX (Australian Wool Exchange) levies were extracted.

So we won't be living off these sheeps backs unless we eat them.

At least it will pay for the extra bag of Pig feed I had to buy today.
  ¶ 11:32 AM

  Talk about nine lives
The mobile butcher was expected to visit this weekend and slaughter our pigs.

He was first booked to come last weekend, but his car broke down.
This weekend he again appears to have had car trouble.

The most annoying part of this is that we're out of pig food and I'll have to get some more to feed them until we get the butcher to actually appear or find another that can do it.

I'll have to learn what I can so we don't have to depend on others.  ¶ 7:32 AM

  Organic Pest Control???
I moved the sheep into a new "cell" today and after I was done, I noticed these wrens riding around on the sheeps backs. I assume they're there for an easy feed.

I have a fly trap near the sheep that is baited with something that smells like bad meat. It's meant to protect them from the type of flies that cause "flystrike", but maybe flies just hang because sheep smell a bit (just like sheep, not bad, just different to people).

  ¶ 9:52 PM