Our main focus is on fibre, and fibre processing, hence the alpacas (suri's) and the goats. The sheep are basically glorified grass cutters, but my tractor should arrive soon :-). Also the sheep are good for putting in the freezer.
We moved onto our place about 2 years about (October 22 2003), and since then we have built an implement shed, dressage arena for Steph, installed 50,000 litres of water storage, a large decked dog run, removed a cattle race.Our current plans with Littlebush include refencing most of the property and changing the layout of the paddocks so as to make stock movement around a bit easier (we're going to put a race down the middle), build a new set of stock yards at the end of the race with sheep and alpacas in mind, reclaim the paddock in which the cattleyards are currently, and the most important currently is resowing the paddocks so as to remove the endophyte ridden grass.
We were having difficulties in finding contractors to do our resowing, thankfully we've now got a sprayer (Small Wheel Sprayers), an ag contractor to do the direct drilling (Gray Contractings), and located a few spreaders for the lime (1 ton per acre) and super10 (375Kg over all the paddocks).
With the tractor (a small MF-TEA), we should be able to keep the paddocks in much better shape, esp during spring and as the grass goes to seed, last year we really damaged the alpaca fleece by letting the grass go to seed and also they were in the yards for a time aswell with hay due to staggers! This year fingers crossed we'll be able to get a good cut of fleece off them.
Anyway, tomorrow we're shearing the sheep and goats, maybe we'll find out if our ewe is fat, has lots of fleece or is pregnant.
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