As well as the seasonal jobs, the lambs start being sold in May, and they are brought in for grading on a regular basis, which involves feeling down thier back, and the top of thier tail to see how much meat they have, it must cover thier ribs nicely, and we wiegh, tag, seperate and clean ( that means dagging, again!) the lambs and they are 37kgs upwards, and we take most of them to the slaughter house directly.
The dogs 'holding' (that means keeping the sheep bunched in a certain area, without coming back past the dogs.) the sheep in the yard, as they slowly make thier way out of a small race in the top right corner, this race has about 4-5 inches of water in which a foot solution has been added to help maintain good foot condition, and helps against foot rot, they are sent through this every 3 weeks, so they get used to it after the first time, it doesnt actually take too long, but it is the gathering and driving to the yard that takes quite some time, and then returning them back to the fields.
Another job after silage that has to be done to prevent to ewes and lambs having Maggots, due to flies laying eggs on the sheeps wool, and then they hatch and burrow into the flesh and basically if left, would eat away at them until they were either driven crazy, infection set in, or both and they would die,
So we send them through a race, and into a Jetter, which is basically a mobile shower,
As the sheep walk through, a sensor triggers and a high powered set of jets of sheep dip spray from head to foot as they are walking out, much quicker than dipping, and less stress for the animals.
This may have to be done twice throughout the summer/ autumn, depending on how warm it is and for how long the good weather lasts.
The Rams forming an orderly line to go through the jetter.
The picture shows below two bars at the top of the jetter, as the sheep pass through it they press the bars upwards and they get jetted down to the skin in lines which runs down the whole body.
We have had our own jetter now for 3 years and have found it to be very succesful and convinient.
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