Adgingbong

Today we had to get up very early at 05:00am before sunrise to head to Roderick Taylors Farm Adgingbong, which is about 25kms away from Cunnamulla. On our way we saw a lot of kangaroos, cows and different kinds of birds.

Rod and Claudia (another girl from Germany, she works on Rods farm) invited us to experience the farm life and lamb marking on our own.  So we drove to the Paddock where the sheep were supposed to be, but it was empty and the gate was open. So the sheep were all over the place and had to be mustered first. That is not that easy if your property is about 310qkms big. So Rod jumped in his plane to gather all the sheep together, what took about 2 hours. The others jumped on their Rhinos or Motorbikes to follow Rods instructions, which he gave via a radio unit. Once we had the sheep on the Paddock where they were supposed to be, we started to separate the lambs from the other sheep.

Three real farmers were marking and castrating the lambs – it is not really nice to watch, if you are not used to have blood all over yourself – but it surely has to be done. The other sheep had to go through some sort of shower, where they get some kind of treatment in their wool, which prevents the sheep from getting fly blown where flies inject their eggs into the sheep. Sheep blow flies is a really bad disease for these animals, where they lose all their fur and their bones get hard so they can’t move anymore. That can be very bad for the sheep and their owner.

During the whole process a lamb was born. Claudia told us that this happens a lot, because the sheeps are really nervous and stressed out so they give birth really quick.

This is some tough work famers have to do, you see, that  the sheep don’t do whatever you tell them to do. You really need to be loud and sometimes rough to get everything done in time. Don’t forget the heat out there, theres barely shade to hide. So we were really happy to have a smoko with coffee and delicious muffins, which Claudia made for us.

We had an awesome day and definitely want to help out on that farm again!