Saturday, June 21, 2014

the show must go on

We might be still drought declared, along with around 80% of Queensland, who knows how much of New South Wales, and South Australia too (but they apparently don’t believe in drought in SA, leaving their farmers high and very dry!) but the show, as they say, must still go on. What rain we did get over the “wet season” did amazing things all things considered, and finally a break in the market allowed us to move on anything that was of marketable weight.

Plucked from navel gazing, knee deep in never ending laundry (how does that happen, I am sure they are dumping their clean clothes straight back into the dirty laundry basket) and book work I ignore for as long as possible,I was pressed into service to help muster.

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Such a contrast to previous years. The skies are still blue and the country is still big…just a lot dryer and grass is a lot shorter. But still, these little fellas didn’t do so badly, having reasonable feed back in the hills, and the last storms running some water meaning their distance to water was substantially less for a little while.

And then we moved on; another day, another place, another paddock, another mob, moving on what we can. In the lingo, its called “lightning off”. We had an offsider, who was quite happy to combine her patterns – florals and camo are just the thing for paddock wear didn’t you know!!

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In this case it wasn’t steers we were sending to south, but empty (non-pregnant) heifers. These heifers are the replacement heifers that normally would go into the main breeding herd, having been nursed along and looked after like royalty in the past 12 months. However the decision had to be made to reduce numbers any way possibly, and these were in a marketable state. Sadly they aren’t sold on to someone else needing breeders – very few people in the state are in that position – so will grace your supermarket shelf in the very near future.

Such is life, and as they say…the show must go on.

6 comments:

  1. Oh, it is so dry :( I could hope for some winter rain for you but I don't think it'll do much, my hoping that is. Thanks for sharing because despite how dry it looks it still makes for great pics.

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  2. The colours look spectacular - love the dress sense of the young - as long as it is a "favourite" - I love the pink but our cows would spook and need re mustering. Wish our cattle were "saleable". Hoping for very widespread rain.....

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  3. They are great photos Sharon, even though the subject matter is less than desirable. Hope the heifers settled in well to their new home and are doing well.
    That mule still looking that shiny?

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  4. GOBSMACKED. I love painting the outback, but i think I have to remix my colour palette. Exquisite x

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    Replies
    1. I prefer the colour palette to include much more green myself!!

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  5. it's difficult lightning off.........esp when you have to sell what you would keep as breeders.......we sold ours thankfully to someone who had enough grass to feed them..........they have started to calve for him.............

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