I have several people looking for young Dexter steers but my girls haven't been producing any unfortunately. Right now I am deciding which of my herd are ready to be sold and it is a difficult task as I love them all. The truth is I can not keep them all so I will be finding good homes for them off the list of lovely people that are waiting for their very own Dexter or two.
I Do have one young Dexter bull for sale and his pedigree papers are coming through right now so as soon as they do he is ready to go. He is red, polled, carries the gene for dun and is not overly big. Halter trained as they all are and quiet. Have a watch out for him coming up on my for sale page.
In my last blog our main bull who is red, Quenton, was just being introduced to his first girls. He has produced a lot of lovely calves and many of these have been girls, We have more red in our herd than usual due to his input. We are very happy with his calves and he has gone over the older girls again this year. We sold our other bull and are now raising an up and coming black bull named Topaz. We are hoping for great things from him but time will tell, he has big shoes to fill.
Lately I have been asked a lot about what seed to use when trying to improve your pasture. We have tried a lot of different things and our land is a challenge being a very free draining sandy soil. I oversow about one third of my pasture a year with seed because we often lose a lot of natural seed bank to false breaks in the season. This is where the rain comes, germinates some seed then no more rain comes for a while and the germination dies. it often repeats several times. I also have perennial pasture species that struggle to stay alive during the dry summer holding the sand together and reviving when any moisture comes along. I will put an article on this and seed recommendations on my health page for reference for the interested people.
This is a busy time of the year when everything dries off and we are busy doing fire safety preparation. Checking the firefighter unit works, has fuel and the tools that belong with it like rakes and shovels are still on the unit. Removing dry grass from around buildings, trimming trees and shrubs, preparing a fire safe paddock for the animals and reviewing the bush fire safety plan. I hope for everyone we all have a safe summer!
Merry Christmas everyone, have a safe and good one
Gillian.