Thanks for the hospitality

[stocky]

I had an opportunity, at the invitation of Sue and Ian, (SuzieQ) to stop by their farm and spend a couple of hours yesterday. I just wanted to tell everyone how nice they were and Sue took the time to give me quite a tour of their place. They have a beautiful view of their valley and the creek. They also have some really good calf raising type mixed beef cows. It is winter, so there wasn't much green and they were feeding hay, but it was a beautiful day and I appreciate very much the opportunity to stop by for a visit and learn more about the way people other than myself do things. Even though it was winter, they also baled over 60 round bales of hay, yesterday.
Thank you, Sue and Ian.

 

[chrisy]

It must be nice to meet up with other board members, shame I live so far away form anyone.
Stocky do you keep British Whites like the one in your avatar? they are a good looking Cow.

 

[Suzie Q]

Thank you so much for coming David. It was such a lovely welcome to this forum. I do not get many visitors out here as we are too far. LOL I told you I could promise that you would be out of a City. I hope you had a lovely drive through the Hinterland to here. I am guessing it wasn't as green as it would be other times of the year.

David arrived with a whole box full of Krusty Kreme Doughnuts (not how we spell donuts here!!!) and then I took so long with him outside that they did not get to have any of them. (I felt very guilty.) Hubby fell in love with the doughnuts and made me look up the website to see where they are. I think it is probably a good thing that there is not a shop any where near here!!!! Plus I printed out where they deliver to if you order online and again nowhere near here and no!!! I did not finish my tea!!!!

Ian is sorry that he could not join in the tour with you. He has gone back to work this morning. He took 4 days off to have a good go at putting the shed up. All four walls and the door are up now. It took 2 and half days to put the walls up.

The round bales had a lot of dead grass in them. The frost killed it. There was only grass there as we have not been able to irrigate without the bore. Normally this time of year we would be making prime lucerne (alfalfa) square bales and our cultivation would look as green as the one up on the next hill. As it is we only have few square bales left in the shed. The bore pump hopefully will go down today.

When feeding out one of the new round bales yesterday Papa stepped back and wouldn't open the bale. Hubby said he just kept pointing and saying something but that wasn't enough for hubby to get out of the tractor!!!!

Eventually Papa had to come to the door and told him to get out there was a snake. The snake was hanging with its head out of the bale. A red belly black snake. I have never seen that before, and snakes usually hibernate during winter, but the cold weather hasn't really hit us yet.

I said aren't the bales too tight for a snake to get into, but apparently with the dead grass the hay just falls out of the bale when the wrapping is removed. The cattle were eating them last night. It will be a day or two before I know how much of them they leave behind.

 

[Suzie Q]

David - you make our cattle look eensy weensy, teeny weeny!!!! I swear David is standing uphill a bit from the herd.

The water you see below is not one of our dams or our lagoon. It is water left behind from rain about 3 or 4 months ago. We did flood back then too. We don't have to get rain here to flood. If it rains up the mountain we get it about 12 hours later.

As you can see David wasn't too scary. They didn't run away when they saw him or heard his accent!!!!

 

[bigbull338]

glad yall got to meet an have a good visit.

 

[Angus Cowman]

Stocky
I see how ya are you will travel 1/2 way around the world to go visiting but will drive within 10 miles of me and not stop for a visit :lol: :lol:

glad ya had a good visit

 

[stocky]

Angus,
I have to plead guilty as charged. My only defense is that when I drive by your house, it is 3am and I hate to bother you at that time of morning. When I stopped by their house, it was also about 3am in the morning, your time, but they were out working hard with Sue feeding the cattle and Ian and his father putting siding on a barn. LOL
One of these days I need to get down your way in the daylight.
There was some beautiful cattle country and an area with alot of vegetable farming inland from Gold Coast. Today, I am going driving into the vinyard country around Perth, on the west coast.

 

[Suzie Q]

LOL We don't really have barns. Although some of the new sheds I have seen now have a 'barn' design.

I have never housed animals with feed in the same place. I guess no need as we don't need to do it for warmth and no worries about getting the feed to the animals because of being snowed or iced in.

There are a lot of wineries out past us too!

 

[stocky]

Chrisy, Yes, we have British Whites, but they are not purebred. Back in 1980, Dad bought a few and we kept breeding them and mixing them and keeping the BW colored heifers. We were up to about 90 mama cows, but the last several years we have bred to a Charolais bull, so we no longer get BW colors, but the feeder calves sell very well and they grow outstanding. We sell the calves right off the cow, and most of them weigh from 600 to 725. They are gentle, easy to work with, excellent mothers and all around easy keepers.

 

[GMN]

I always think how nice it is to see how others farm, especially in other parts of the world, doesn't look too much different than in MO. What kind of cows do you have SuzieQ, their ears look long and floppy?Thats funny with the donuts, are they krispy Kremes instead of Krusty Kremes? Looks like ya all had a nice visit.

GMN

 

[Jogeephus]

Bet that was a great trip. How many hours by plane?

 

[Suzie Q]

Let see GMN.

In my avatar you have my bull who is a 7/8ths Bazadais - Garbrook Brody

The head coming in on the left is a Droughtmaster steer - Crisp

Next to him looks Jackie - a Droughtmaster cow.

Another Droughtmaster looking around a Hereford. That looks like Ridge I think.

The Hereford is Larrie (Had to have a Larrie as I have a Curly!!!!)

The Hereford next to her is Harriots calf.

I would say that is our Murray Grey behind David.

On the other side of his is Sandys Calf. She is a Droughtmaster.

The white splash you can see at the back is Helga - a Charolais born here out of Curly who is a Charolais cross. I have at least 2 Charolais Crosses. Rio is one as well.

The black calf (Blackie) is out of a Greyman cow with Brody as the dad.

You can see the hump on one of our Brahman Cows. We have 3 of those.

The head this side of the Brahman looks like one of our Droughtmaster (bull) x Gelbvieh (Mum). I started with 2 Gelbvieh cows and at the moment I still have them and quite a few offspring. Some from a droughtmaster bull and 3 from Brody.

In another paddock I have 2 x Bazadais cows and they have given me 2 x Bazadais heifers. They are not from my bull and will go back to a Bazadais bull not mine.

I have 22 calves on the ground at the moment with Brody as the dad - 10 have been weaned and there at least 2 more who will be soon.

We have just had Diamond (Gelbvieh) calve with Brody's second calf, so we are into his second season with her, however there are 3 that will calve soonish to him with their first calf to him and one that is in with him but is not close and will be her first calf. Two of the ones starting to spring is Harriots Calf, the Hereford next to David and Murray the Murray Grey behind David. I think the other is Mo. A Droughtmaster.

LOL I have never head of Krusty Kremes. To me the spelling for Krispy Kreme Doughnuts is all wrong. It should be Crispy Cream Donuts!!!

 

[stocky]

Jogeephus, yes, fantastic trip. From Springfield, MO. It was 30 hours coming out to Brisbane, that was 18 hours flight time and the rest layovers. Then it was a 5 1/2 hour flight from Brisbane to Perth. Tomorrow, my flight is at 5:45am leaving Perth to Sydney to Los Angeles, to Dallas to Springfield and I get home at 5:10pm on the same day. Leave on Wednesday and arrive on Wednesday with the time change. It will be about 23 hours flight time and 9 hours layover. To come here, it is best to stay at least 2 weeks so the body and mind adjust and then you get time to enjoy things. This was a hurried trip of only 9 total days, but it was great---we will see how I feel after the trip tomorrow LOL