Visiting Critter

A friend of mine is moving from southern QLD to Branxholm, a village close to Scottsdale. She came to visit and loved the area so much she decided to move here, and I think the time span from first visit to arrival was twelve weeks.

Her waler gelding, Reuben, has been delivered a couple of weeks early as there was a racing carnival on the week they were moving and no room on any horse trucks anywhere.

Reuben's transport coming down the road

Offloading from a truck worthy of him

Meeting the crew

Reuben is running with the larger cow herd and has settled in comfortably. However, I think he will be vastly relieved to see his owner arrive.

The black hen has been sitting on eggs for a few weeks now. Hen eggs take 21 days to hatch so we had to hustle to make a hutch for the hen and any lucky chicks to live in for the first week or so. The hutch will keep the chicks safe from crows and quolls.

Antonia, a HelpXer from Barvaria, and Geoff put together an A-frame hutch and nest box.

Starting the A-frame :

Cutting boards for the box:

Drilling pilot holes:

Assembling the box :

Working on the A-frame :

Ready for a floor and roof :

Stapling on the mesh :

The finished product and successful carpenters :

The hen checks out her new palace :

Catching Up Yet Again

It's been a few weeks and I have some more posts to do over this coming week to catch everything up, but here are a few pics from around the farm to hold you for the moment.

Alvin loves the old farm ute. If you even open a door he comes running. He expects to go for a ride every time it leaves the farm and he's more than happy to just camp out and make sure it's not lonely. I also suspect that he likes to chill out in the ute because Poppy won't climb in without help !

Cow owners can go to great lengths to keep weaned calves away from the milk bar. Fifi's bull calf, Taurus, is now eight months old and quite old enough to have been weaned for a while. Since he sees things a little differently we purchased an udder support just in case we need to have them in the same paddock.

Originally designed to hold up old udders or ones with broken down ligaments, they are also useful for keeping calves at bay. Fifi is a little jumpy, but Blossom will do anything for food, so we tried it out on Blossom to get the straps all stright in our heads before trying to wrangle Fifi into it.

One of Trina's friends and I dressed Blossom because I had the experience of designing and fitting Molly's short lived udder cover, and the friend is tall enough to reach over Blossom's back.

Somehow I don't think she is hugely impressed ? That's Fifi in the background looking even more doubtful.

Lee left the little Fergie with us for a few days and showed Geoff how to use the slasher. There weren't any land speed records broken, but he did a good job of the little paddock next to Trina's house.