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Thread: Sheeps
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24th March 2009, 12:48 PM #46Retired
- Join Date
- May 1999
- Location
- Tooradin,Victoria,Australia
- Age
- 74
- Posts
- 2,515
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24th March 2009, 01:43 PM #47
They also use small planes Ed but the dogs cant hear you very well
Cheers,
Howdya
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24th March 2009, 02:51 PM #48
Helicopters are good for spotting sheep but a bit of a waste of time for mustering... sheep are just too bloody stupid.
Helicopters work well for cattle.
My brother had a gyrocopter for a while, he would go up with a handheld 2 way & call the blokes on the ground to let them know where the mobs were.
He was a bit like me with my tractor, he rolled it on takeoff, stacked it into a turkey bush & parked it on the whirly bit.Cliff.
If you find a post of mine that is missing a pic that you'd like to see, let me know & I'll see if I can find a copy.
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24th March 2009, 03:15 PM #49Senior Member
- Join Date
- Dec 2008
- Location
- Hunter Valley
- Posts
- 81
Ed,
If you are asking which race of people, Aussie, or Paddy, make the best shepherds, you are asking us to compare two completely different management regimes, and ,in most cases, two destinctly different sheep types.
Australian sheep, mostly the Merino, are grown for their wool, generally have only one lamb at a time, and ,apart from routine shearing, crutching and drenching, are pretty much left to their own devices.
Irish (or British) bred sheep are either dual purpose breeds, i.e bred for meat and fibre, or are meat sheep.They frequently have twins or triplets, and one breed, the Finnish Landrace, almost has a litter-up to five lambs (and, as ewes have only two teats, there often is "No tit for Tatt)
Because Northern hemisphere flocks are small c.f. Antipodean ones, and the areas of farms are minute, it is easy for a shepherd to see his flock on an almost daily basis, whereas an Aussie, on either a motor-bike or a horse, frequently only sees his sheep a few times a year.
I worked as a vet in UK, and was frequently callede upon to do caesarians, or pull lambs, but was never asked to do the same at home.Most shepherds in UK house their lambing ewes and watch over them like precious daughters.
Pommie mum sheep are much more prone to metabolic disorders because of their larger broods, but with the increasing popularity of exotic breeds on boutique farm, I predict that some of the newer vet graduates will have to bone up on sheep diseases a bit more.
To put things a bit more in perspective for you, when I began jackerooing in the 1960s, I workrd on a prop[erty with 25 THOUSAND breeding ewes, and we had a good year if we marked 70% lambs.When i worked in UK, a large flock of sheep in the south of England, was 2 HUNDRED ewes.A BAD season was if they marled LESS THAN 150% lambs.A figure closer to 200% was desirable.
So, in answer to your original question, it's horses (Yes, or bloody bikes) for courses, but I suggest that it is "Each to his own".
For our foreign friends, a jackeroo (or jillaroo, depending on gender) was a trainee station, sorry, farm, manager.The breed is now largely extinct.
Hope that helps.
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25th March 2009, 01:39 AM #50
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