Grass growth has remained strong here lately, mostly helped by the occasional rain shower and the great sunshine. Growth is currently around 75kg of dry matter per hectare (DM/ha), which is giving me plenty of surplus grass to be removed in order to maintain quality.

With current trends on our television sets being of a nostalgic vibe with programmes like MacGyver, Lethal Weapon, etc, reappearing, I decided to have one of my own.

With the weather forecast looking good for a reasonable number of days I took a paddock out for hay and if the weather broke I’d have some high-quality haylage instead. All went to plan and I got to make some nice small squares of leafy green hay.

The kids had great fun racing between the rows after I had stacked all of the bales.

Stacking the bales brought back many memories of the work we carried out when we were young when all hands were drafted in and dinner would have been eaten out in the fields.

We have started to wean the ewes and lambs with the first mob weaned last week and the CPT mobs having been weaned this week.

The yearlings will be weaned next week, hopefully. Now is the time of year that I tend to find out where the weak links are in the farm fencing and getting them brought up to scratch is a necessity. How is it that sheep have developed the art of Houdini style escapes around the farm? Regardless of how well I think I have fenced the fields, you can be sure that there is always one rogue ewe or lamb that will put it to the test.

However, aside from the fencing issue, I find managing the stock from now on a lot easier as lambs are divided into four groups with ewes and the heifers following around behind cleaning out the paddocks. The groups are made up as follows – I divide the male and female lambs into two separate groups.

These are then divided by their weight with the heavier male lambs put on the Redstart, while the other groups will be on grass. As lambs are drafted from the Redstart I will introduce other lambs into the group to maintain the stocking level on it.

This year, I have decided to sow some extra Redstart later so as to have a better balance between bulk and quality. I have found that if I sow it all at the one time the last section to be grazed has gone a little too bulky.

First thing after weaning, I will pull out and cull any ewes with broken mouths, problem elders and those that have received a double notch in their ear since last year.

Any ewes that are lame will be removed and put into a separate group for treatment. Any that don’t respond favourably will also be culled from the system. Once these ewes are identified, I will then have a better idea of how many replacements are required.

The group of heavy ewe lambs will be where I select my replacements from. Information such as litter size, birth weight and average daily gain from their lambing to weaning will be used to select these.

Any of the ewe lambs suitable for breeding, which are surplus to my requirements, will be sold to a number of repeat customers.