ARCHIVED NEWSLETTER - 21^st September 2005

Autumal Equinox

Unfortunately we had very little rain before the end of June – the hay crop was thin and only yielded about 60% of normal.

The ewes and lambs were working hard to feed themselves, but looked thrifty at weaning in the first week of August.

We prayed for rain!

On the 31st of August we got almost 3 inches of rain from the tail end of hurricane Katrina. Nature’s response was amazing – the grass greened up and jumped after its long summer rest and the lambs quickly picked up.

Today we have just finished the three days of lamb shearing and the lambs look surprisingly good. On the first day we set a new shed record for eight hours of shearing - three shearers did over 600 and Donny Metheral did 300 for the day. Donny finished up today by shearing the last lamb blindfolded (Donny that is, not the lamb!).

Judging by the lambs now and the feed available we expect to ship lambs in about three weeks time.

After little interest in the spring we suddenly found ourselves selling six guard dogs in the last two months – I guess coyote problems have been building up over the summer. Hopefully we have a bitch bred for next winter’s litter.

The next three months will be very busy, shipping the May born lambs and preparing the ewes for breeding in December. The small group of winter lambers has just been bred – and so the cycle goes on.