The weather has been hot and steamy, I do jobs in loops, a couple of items in the same area and then back inside to cool off before the next loop. A big couple of days and more to come, so what I've been doing in no particular order.
I realised that the ATO is no longer sending out BAS documents for Geoff's electrical work, which is normally my reminder to get the data entry done. So I hooked in and got three months work done and now I have to go to the ATO website via MyGov and do them online in the new system.
I went to get feed for Annie and found a 21% protein calf pellet cheaper at Stronach than the 16% pellet from Elders, a bit of a bonus. While I was at Elders I sat with the agronomist and put together a weed plan for attacking the barley grass.
I fertilised and mulched the veges in the raised beds, some of the spuds were looking a bit anaemic so I hope that will keep them going. If they continue to decline I will bandicoot whatever they've produced and put some new ones in.
After the monstering of the tangelo and finding out the lemonade had died back and all I was nurturing was the root stock, I took both those trees out. It's going to be hard enough this year keeping water up to the trees that I want without watering trees with nasty spikes and bitter fruit.
I found an egg cache in the implement shed while I was prepping Bessie for moving the hay that will hopefully be baled in the next day or so. Jason fluffed it up today, I assume raking will be next. The dogs get all cached eggs as I have no idea how old they are.
I told Calab that if he could get the old whippersnipper that was lurking in the back of the implement shed going he could have it. He did and so it's his and now he is using it to get his yard back into shape, so that works for me.
I have finished cleaning out and vacuuming the spare bedroom and office for the vet student that will come to stay at the end of the week. Probably. I have yet to get confirmation that she is coming. At least the room is ready for guests. It tends to become a bit of a dumping ground.
Leigh carted away all his round bales from the hay shed today. I went down to check on what he was doing and found he'd hit one of the calf feeders and busted it so I moved everything he could possibly bump a tractor into, and in the process found another egg cache. The shed looks very empty now and the chooks will probably go into shock in the morning. He dropped off the hay forks we'd been using for the last eight years in case I need them to move the rounds I get off my paddocks.
However, I spoke to Richard from Scottsdale Engineering about getting some forks made (he quoted $900 two years ago) and he told me to call Delmade first and see if they had any made up. I did and they did, $710 delivered to Scottsdale ! With the price of steel going up over the last two years we were looking at more like $1600 to get a set made, I lucked out and found their last set on clearance. And it looks like they'll be here on the truck on Friday.
Annie calved about 5.30pm. A black bull calf with a white stripe down his back, clearly from Jason's bull, Rocky. She is huge in the udder and I haven't seen him latch on, but a check just on dark showed him bouncing around with his tail up, doing circles around his mum. So he seems to have plenty of energy ... we'll see how he's going first thing in the morning when I take Annie in for her first milking.
The first few days are usually a bit of a rodeo, as they don't want to take their eyes off the calf and if it moves out of sight there is general panic. But if you pen the calf and the calf gets weird about the pen, even though the cow can see it, they freak out about the calf being weird. After about three days things start to stabilise.
No comments:
Post a Comment