What have we been up to?

My apologies for my tardiness in updating everyone about what has been happening on Caluka Farms. It has been a very busy time, but let's start with some photos and then I will write more detail in subsequent blogs.

The photos below were taken today (6th July 2020). Explanations are in each photo. We have three mobs of sheep - weaner lambs, mixed aged ewes in-lamb with some late born lambs at foot (about to be weaned this week), and maiden ewes about to drop lambs. As I will explain in a separate blog, we had a big clean out of old ewes, and any ewe that was dry, too wooly, and was at the bottom end of defective. All the ewes left are in-lamb, except for the weaner ewe lambs and ~400 one year old ewes that were put in with rams for a second chance at getting into lamb. Those are a month away from being scanned.

Alpha paddock. All paddocks received ~100kg Urea in the first week of May. Alpha paddock received 200kg/ha, and it is by far the quickest paddock to recover from grazing. It was our most acidic paddock so it has improved nicely. It is ~9 days away from being grazed by the weaner lambs.

Weaner lambs in Delta paddock. There's ~700 in this paddock with the remaining ~200 late born lambs to join them this week. We are getting 6-7 days grazing per paddock in this mobs rotation.

This is our very sandy paddock (Sierra). Notice the yellowing in the kikuyu. This is induced iron deficiency from the lime I spread earlier this year. It is only happening on the white sand and peaty areas on the farm.

A closer look at the maiden ewes on the iron deficient kikuyu. I was moving them out when taking this photo. They are due to start lambing from 16th July.

In the distance are the maiden ewes. They should all be in the furtherest paddock but I left the gate open last night and most of them wanted to come back. Sigh. They were all about to be moved to their next paddock today. The foreground is Papa paddock that they were in 4 days ago. We are only getting 2-3 days per paddock on this side of the farm, however they now have 3-more paddocks in their rotation to give them more feed as they are not far from lambing.

A scenery shot. The foreground is Juliet paddock and in the background to the right are the mixed aged ewes, in-lamb, with ~200 late born lambs at foot.

Scenery shot of Juliet paddock in the foreground with Indigo in the background beyond the first line of trees. All these paddocks have not been given a sufficient break to get to the 3-leaf ryegrass stage before grazing. Not ideal but a compromise that was needed.

Scenery shot of Juliet paddock in the foreground with our back paddock, Hotel. The bluegums in the background are a neighbours property.