Tails

We are officially sheep farmers! Castlepoint Station is absolutely amazing as you can see from these photos. There are over 7,000 acres of rolling green hills littered with sheep and cows. It is actually so large that even though there are more than 40,000 sheep and 1,000 cows you can look out and barely see the dots on the countryside.


The "docking" process is extremely impressive. It is much more complicated and less gory than I expected. You have to remove the tails because sheep/lambs cannot lift their tails so when they poop it gets stuck and bugs can cause serious health concerns. They can wag them well but that must be different muscles. We basically set up an assembly line where we put the lambs in a device that holds them down (and holds about four lambs at time). First they get their ears clipped depending on gender, then a shot of B12 to make them eat, a scrape vaccination to avoid scabby mouth (my job), then Steve holds their legs down while Greg sears their tails off. Then Steve sprays to keep flies off. His job is actually the hardest because the little guys have incredibly strong legs so they can jump so high and kick really hard. We have both taken a few shots in the head and gut. We will take some pictures whenever there is a extra person around.


Above is a picture of us after our first day of work. We are very dirty because it rained in the morning so the lambs were all muddy and slippery. What is crazy though is that lamb blood comes right out in the wash. We washed these clothes and they were good as new!

Below is another view of Castle Rock. We haven't been down to the beach yet but Steve is going to try to surf when it gets a little warmer.