Over the last ten days we’ve been getting stuck into some early branding. It’s perfect weather for it and with harvest delayed until the end of this week it’s good to get some of the branding done before we hit those lovely 40 + degree days in December. This year we’re giving the calfs an injection to stop the formation and spread of pinkeye an eye disease that at times may affect a small percentage of our herd. This nasty disease is usually more prevalent in dry, dusty conditions and in the past has been treated with an antiseptic spray after infection. The eye becomes irritated, weeps and once infected can eventually cause blindness, however an injection of 2 mil into the neck muscle will hopefully ward off the problem. 

It’s been an interesting year to date. Having started 2011 with a flood and loss of crops we then moved into a substantial dry spell. About six weeks ago the cycle broke and with feed improving everyday we’ve had a couple of problems with calving heifers. These young ladies are carrying hefty calves (even thought they were joined to Angus bulls for easier calving) due to the feed. We’ve had two saves out of three, with a breech birth unfortunately leading to a still born calf. Junior in this picture was born safely in the yards with three ‘male’ nurses in attendence!

He is now out in the paddock with both mum and baby doing just fine. On the construction front there’s been ongoing bits and pieces being done to our new set of yards over on one of the other places. In the old days we would have been out cutting down timber for their construction and then digging four foot deep holes for the uprights, not any more.

Here’s Dad standing beside the load of panels and flat packed loading ramp. These days it’s almost like Ikea for cattle when it comes to new yard construction.

And here’s the near finished result with my sister surveying the race leading to the loading ramp. Now all we need are a few beeves! Someone asked me the other day what our part of the world looked like. Well it’s pretty darn flat.