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.
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