More Work and Play

This week has been another busy week for us, more cattle work and the last of the preg testing for Jamie. With preg testing finished for another year, we just sit and wait for the calves to arrive. The dogs have been doing a great job the last week, however we have had an injury. Sonny was walking bringing the cows along and cut his front leg on something and needed 6 staples, this has left me short a mustering dog and boy did I miss him!!!!!! 

I had planned on using Sonny & Bella to help Jamie bring the last mob of cattle in but with Sonny out I thought I might take Nell. Now Nell is still only a baby and her working the cattle was a no pressure job if she worked the cattle I would have happy if she didn't well it just didn't matter. However my Nell has turned out to be a little cow dog, she was so happy to be out there working them. We had to get 500 first calf heifers from the start of the lane way to the cattle yards which is about 12 km's, at the start of the lane way there is  a lot timber and it can be quite hard to cattle through there at times. If you are not in control they will get pass you and go back to where they started, we started the cattle and the dogs were off  and for most of the time the dogs were out of sight helping push the cattle through the timber. After getting through the timber it is easy going to the cattle yards, it normally takes us about 3 hrs depending on how the cattle are walking. The following photos have been taken on my phone while on the motorbike so they may not be as clear.



Lucy is proving to be very good on cattle as well, since Bill has been retired Jamie has been taking Rusty, Frank and Lucy every time he musters. Lucy has just been going from strenght to strenght she is only a little dog but boy can she move cattle. Bella has also been helping she has only ever seen sheep and never worked off a motorbike and at the start was not to sure what she was meant to be doing, so I just let her go and let her think about what we where doing. This worked well and in the end she had a couple of tries of biting a nose but not quite sure if she was aloud to.

We have a few merino ewe's which we have joined to dorper rams, the ewe's have started to lamb in the last week  so I have been going out once a day to check on them just to make sure all is well  as we have a few older ewe's. Last year we got a maremma to run with our training sheep, we got him as a young pup and bonded him ourselves. This whole process has been a great learning curve, to see a animal to bond with sheep on such a natural level is fanatic. Bear is now 15 months old and lives with the sheep all the time, if something upsets him he will bark and all of his sheep will run towards him. He has also taken on a motherly role towards any lamb. A couple of our old ewe's have not been able rear there lambs so Bear will stay with them until I find him and his lamb, he is so kind to the little lambs.

Over the weekend we have had a couple of friends visit with there dogs, its great to catch up with them and see how there dogs are going. They both have pups from our Mirk/MiMi litter so I was very keen to see how they are going and both pups are going very well  it will be great to see them in a few months to see how there training is going. I was only able to get some photos of Roy working.

Our training paddock has been convertered into a ISDS singles trial course with a  fetch gate, drive gates, shedding ring and pen. It has been challenging to get dogs too drive and cross drive who have been taught not to cross you and the sheep.  More news next time on how the dogs are going with this new challenge.