Another Day with the Sheep

Well run of the mill sheep feeding again today, and again today no problems. I did break the monotony a little though and for some added excitement fed the mobs in a different order than I usually do. Just did the basic 3 mob run with the added windmill check over on Bob's and a quick glance over the 4th mob of ewes over there to make sure they were all ok.... and they were.. all ok.

While I was at it thought I'd run down to Honiton to check on the mob of hoggets down there. They've been on a barley stubble for... well I cant actually remember how long now, but it seems like ages, and yes they'd eaten it out pretty well. This is the mob, that I think I have mentioned in earlier blogs, that we haven't crutched yet. It's a fair old walk for them to get to any of our shearing sheds for crutching (and then another fair old walk down to our block at Goldsmiths beach to get them to the paddock we want them in). So they'll need their strength for that, and having eaten out the stubbles they've been on for so long I decided to move them across to the next two paddock on the North side at Honiton, on the block we call Granny's. These paddocks are pea stubbles and still fresh (ungrazed). They should have a ball in there with plenty of peas on the ground (shatter loss from harvest), plus there's plenty of summer weeds that have come up, like mignonette (that was a pure guess... I have no idea how to spell it, and I bet the spell checker doesn't either, considering it cant even spell "ute").

Come across a minor problem while I was down there...

Yep, bit of a water leak... have no idea how long it's been leaking for but it doesn't look real good. Actually the photo makes it look worse that it really was I recon.

Ahhh the culprit! The poly, which is 3/4" D-class down there I recon, although I always get confused with all the different classes of poly (B,C,D,12 etc - I don't know what's what) and this pipe has been there long before I've been around. Anyway it had a small split just as it went into the joiner. All I had to do was undo it (get wet), pull it apart (get wet), pull the end of the joiner that goes inside the poly out (get wet) and cut an inch or so off the end and rejoin it (get wet). No problems, and within 5 minutes it was all good.

It's always good to give the trough a quick clean out too when moving a mob onto the paddock, especially if there hasn't been any stock in there for ages. The water was quite green, and there was quite a thick layer of thick, black, sludgey sediment on the bottom. The sheep will appreciate their fresh water... Especially as I suspect that the water leak up the line abit has meant that they've been short of water for a while.