Safe to Eat - NZ Beef & Lamb

Elite athletes around the world are having to be careful with meat, which can mean not consuming any.  In the lead up to the Olympics our women's hockey team have had to forgo eating meat as they have been in countries where they cannot ensure the meat is additive free.  Drug testing has become so sensitive it is picking up even the slightest traces of illegal additives.   Let me assure you New Zealand Beef and Lamb meat is free of hormones, steroids and antibiotics!   Just a shame our teams can't take their own meat with them!!  No better way to get you iron than eating good red meat.

The Rams come out

                  It's a very frosty morning, but perfect for putting sheep through the yards - the mud will all be frozen!

                                                         And the sun is shining (just a perfect day for skiing really)

            So the ewes are in the yards ready to be drafted - the rams and light ewes and 2 neighbours lambs will come out

                                                                   Back to the bachelor life for another 10 months

 The last of the mob heading down into the drafting race.  The boss is standing by the gates and puts the sheep the way he wants them to go by moving the gates just as they come to them.  Being perendales 2 jumped out of the skinnies pen back to the main mob - I didn't tell him till the end, and if they had enough energy to do that they weren't too skinny.

 The lightest are given a drench.  You can see the drenching gun in the Boss's hand, which gets slipped gently into the corner of the mouth and the drench is deposited well back on the tongue so it is swallowed.  You have to be careful doing this job so you don't injure the mouth, but when you are good at it (not me) you can do it very quickly.  One race is easily done, and it is one job that the Boss still tends to do rather than get the boys on the conveyor doing it, as we did have a few injuries with hoggets when we had them done, as they struggled too much and several  necks were hurt.

Only one pen of skinnies out of 1750 ewes - not bad, and there really is only one very light one, who probably has something more than worms wrong with her.  Just finished before the mud began to thaw too and very thankfull for the thermal gumboots keeping my feet warm.

Then the Calves

We'll all stand by the gate, so we get out the easy way

even though there is plenty of room

The calves have come in for their dose of Copper and Selenium (and a mix of other minerals) and a dip for Lice.

Why do we give them minerals?  Not just because we feel like it I assure you - but every year we get a sample of the cull cows' livers tested at the works, and they tell us the mineral status for the all important copper and selenium.  New Zealand being such a young country geologicaly  the soils haven't weathered enough to release many of the important minerals  for our stock.  Even with supplementation we find we are only just adequate.

A shortage of copper means you can get - declined growth rate, diarrhoea, boney changes - fragility and osteoporosis  (lambs getting broken legs for no apparent reason can be a sign), poor coat colour, poor reproductive performance and anaemia.

And with Selenium a general unthriftiness in marginal cases and in more severe cases white muscle disease (mainly affecting the heart muscle, and rarely seen now as people are aware of the need for supplementation).  Fertility is affected and our rams and bulls usually get a dose of selenium about 8 weeks before being put out for mating to help ensure healthy sperm counts.

It is difficult to get the balance right - too much lime inhibits release of copper, and iron affects it too in the soil, but we do try to do our best.  And always remembering -"That too much of a good thing" can be TOXIC.