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Castledale

Winter Ramblings – 11th June 2025

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Winter has finally arrived – and so did some very welcome rain over last weekend.

Last Saturday saw us at the Shepparton and District Handweavers & Spinners’ Wool Day. It was a lovely day – much better inside the hall compared to outdoors – and involved many conversations and piles of coloured wool.

Meanwhile, down south our latest batch of Castledale combed tops is underway. The scoured fleece is now going through the steps to being double-combed and delicious! Today it was on the carder in one of the preliminary steps to open the fleece and prepare it for the gill and comb (photo below of the carded sliver in “cans”). It won’t be long before it is all done and we will be dyeing it frantically before the Australian Sheep & Wool Show next month. If you’re quick you may still be able to grab a bargain on a Bulk Buy pre-sale which is on until 30th June 2025 (unless it sells out prior). The Castledale combed top is one of our licensed products with the Australian Fibre Collective (promotion of 100% Australian grown & processed fibre) as well as with the Australian Made Campaign at the highest level as “Product of Australia”. In fact, we only just recently completed our latest audit with the Australian Made Campaign to prove compliance.

Castledale Wool, off the carder being wound into cans

As we prepare for the Australian Sheep & Wool Show at Bendigo Showgrounds (July 18-20, 2025) we realised that this will be our 10-year anniversary of the very first Merino and Castledale processing runs!! Oh my goodness!!! Time flies when we’re having fun. LOL And in the spirit of Birthdays and Anniversaries…. we will have something a bit Special at this year’s “Sheep Show”. You’ll have to come along to see us at the “Flower Shed” (left hand side as you drive in via Gate 1) More details soon….!

Here on the farm it has been an anxious wait for the “autumn break” (we received a “false break” in March and then nothing until Winter.  Ooops). Trying to juggle the expenses to keep the sheep well has been challenging at times. Lambing will be in August this year.

For those of you who remember our dear departed Drysdale ram Gilbert – we still have his older sister, Minty. She turns 13 this year which a grand old age for a sheep. No front teeth at all and is now blind and mostly deaf like her mother became. She’s fully retired and living in the garden with a couple of companions and enjoying her mealtimes. (So much so that I can never get a good pic of her except with her head in the food dish!) Not sure how much longer she has but we will try and give her the good things while we can.

Time to wind up for the evening – the workshop is calling with more wool that needs dyeing! If you haven’t pre-ordered your fibre Advent Calendar then you may want to get a move on….

LambMetrics – 6th September 2022

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LambMetrics is our lambing blog which tells some of the tales of farm life at lambing time.
Also contains pretty lamb pictures – and maybe a few confronting ones too.

#LAMBMETRICS for the day
Drysdale & English Leicester Flocks (incl. Black flock)

Born today: 2
Total Lambs Born: 96
Drysdale lambs (live total):
Drysdale X lambs (live total):
English Leicester lambs (live total):
English Leicester X lambs (live total):
Total Sets of Twins born: 22
Total Sets of Triplets born: 2
Total ewe lambs: 60
Total ram lambs: 36
Ewes lambed /86: 71  (82.5 %)
Lamb % : 132.4 % [live]
Assisted/Dystocias: 5
Losses: 2 [lamb]; 1 [ewe]

Castledale & Merino Flocks

Born today:
Total Lambs Born: 116
MerinoX lambs (live total): 25
Castledale lambs (live total): 72
Total Sets of Twins born: 28
Total Sets of Triplets born: 0
Ewes lambed /98: 73  (74.5 %)
Lamb % : 154.7% [live]
Assisted/Dystocias: 7
Losses: 3 [lamb]; 0 [ewe]

NOTABLE MIDWIFERY TALES:

Another lovely day for the lambs today.

Have managed to get some figures crunched, finally. Not finalised at this point but I did break out a spreadsheet to try and wrest control of the Merino/Castledale figures.

Interestingly, the Merino & Castledale ewes lambing in the last few days are much calmer than the first batch. They must be getting the idea…. At this rate I may even stay on top of the numbers rather than playing catch-up all the time.

One startling stat this year is the number of ewe lambs. Normally I’d expect 50/50 or towards 60/40 but it’s actually trending better than the 60/40 in the English Leicester/Drysdale mob and close to 60/40 in the Merino/Castledale. ‘Tis the season as they say…

Okay, so much has been happening. Am forgetting what I did yesterday. LOL But I do know there are lambs everywhere…!

Had a young, pregant English Leicester ewe from the stud flock drop dead yesterday evening. Not exactly sure why and my rudimentary post-mortem didn’t show any super obvious reason. Certainly not lambing related per se. Not ruling out a rupture of something?? Don’t know.

The lambs have been doing very well this year but I noticed one young Drysdale lamb poorly yesterday afternoon. So she and her mum were housed overnight and the lamb treated with antibiotics. Wasn’t sure if I had caught it in time (things can go downhill very fast with lambs) but so far so good and she was looking improved and drinking off her mum today. Fingers crossed.

  • Drysdale lamb who has been receiving treatment
  • Mona and some of her lambs
  • Mona and lambs
  • Raylene and her lamb
  • Raylene and her lamb

LambMetrics – 5th September 2022

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LambMetrics is our lambing blog which tells some of the tales of farm life at lambing time.
Also contains pretty lamb pictures– and maybe a few confronting ones too.

Glorious sunshine, a few more lambs and the odd hiccup.

Yesterday we gained another lamb for the Bottle Gang. Which makes 4 – better than last year.

Am nearly totally up to date with the stats but they keep popping out more! And I normally can’t tag the Merino and Castledale lambs immediately like the Drysdales and English Leicesters so they end up a day behind. Shepherdess problems … LOL

  • The comfy tyre
  • Panda and her lambs

Had some other work that needed doing today but all going well tomorrow we will have a stats update. So far there are nearly 100 lambs in the English Leicester/Drysdale group and nearly 100 in the Merino/Castledale group. I have a sneaking suspicion I ordered the wrong number of tags and will run out … ooops.

  • Nothing to see here…..
  • Peekaboo!

LambMetrics – 1st September 2022

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LambMetrics is our lambing blog which tells some of the tales of farm life at lambing time.
Also contains pretty lamb pictures – and maybe a few confronting ones too.

A huge day today due to shifting the Singles mob. I haven’t been able to “drift off” the new lambs like I can do with the Twins group so it was time for a catch up on the tags and numbers. It gets harder and harder to really tell which ones may have issues when there are a lot of mixed age lambs in one mob. And nothing like impetus of “get a new bale of hay or change paddocks” to get things done.

The lamb backlog will be finished tomorrow but they aren’t helping – at least 4 sets of twins born this afternoon while I was in town for an appointment and then they were all starting to get mixed up so it was time for a change in that paddock too. Lambs everywhere.

The remaining pregnant ewes (approx 25% of the original number) are all together now and they will get their lovely big bale of hay tomorrow. Hopefully I can get back to the daily drift and keep on top of the numbers then!

One Drysdale ewe assisted this morning. Unfortunately, her ram lamb was trying to exit with back feet first and it wasn’t successful. She’s okay but the lamb was lost.

Polly – former pet lamb – delivered her twins today and she is a bit of a dill so she’s now in the garden with Hermione to try and stop her letting her lambs get stolen/mixed up/forgotten.

Time to go feed some lambs again so here’s a little gallery of today’s pics. (I really need to delete some off the phone before I run out of memory!)

  • Drysdale ewe and lambs
  • English Leicester ewe with lamb
  • Polly
  • One of Polly’s lambs

LambMetrics – 30th August 2022

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LambMetrics is our lambing blog which tells some of the tales of farm life at lambing time.
Also contains pretty lamb pictures – and maybe a few confronting ones too.

Today started with a bit of a bang.

(In order of occurrence:)

  • Pull set of Castledale twins
  • Attempt to fix a vaginal prolapse in a ewe
  • Rescue lamb from A Place It Shouldn’t Be
  • Rescue another lamb from another Place It Shouldn’t Be
  • Milk a ewe
  • Feed pet lambs and a few extra
  • Shift some ewes and lambs into a fresh paddock (**CHAOS!**)

And then it was 9am.

Of course there were opportunities to smile…. like when confronted with this feisty Drysdale lad who has the Milk Bar all worked out now. 🙂

King of the castle!

The bonus of the day (wet as it was) was being able to get some non-farm work done.

And then it was time to organise the lunchtime feed, fix the prolapse (again), sort out the odd lamb that had been mixed up when the ewes and lambs got moved, watch a set of twins be born, watch the last (?) black English Leicester ewe birth a black lamb and cuddle a fluffy lamb.

As of this evening the prolapse appears to be under control (fingers crossed) and another set of twins had just been born.

No doubt it will be a case of “Rinse and Repeat” tomorrow!

Shop Talk:

PS. Don’t forget that our Fibre Advent Calendar Range Pre-Order ends tomorrow! 🙂

LambMetrics – 29th August 2022

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LambMetrics is our lambing blog which tells some of the tales of farm life at lambing time.
Also contains pretty lamb pictures – and maybe a few confronting ones too.

A bit of rain overnight – just enough to keep things squelching – and I was hoping for another quiet day in the lambing zone. Especially since I have 2 fingers taped together. LOL

The scene this morning involved a Drysdale ewe – who had scanned for a single pregnancy.

“She’s had two! The scanner was wrong!”

and then

“Things that make you go hmmmmmmm”

Wait a minute, one of these is not like the other….

I pull the drinking lamb away and discover it’s from a set of twins I pulled from a merino ewe (the ones where they were both trying to exit at the same time).

Oh no, the ewe has happily accepted him and she wasn’t as excited about her actual lamb.

So into the pen for her to get the thief away from her. Unfortunately, I suspect he had thieved nearly all the colostrum. Her lamb has been supplemented just in case. He was a bit daft too so that had to be sorted out.

Remember the English Leicester lamb that we grafted onto a Castledale ewe that had lost her lamb due to her teats being too large? Well, she accepted him for sure but we’ve still been having to restrain her to let the lamb drink. I had a big talk to her today – reminding her that it would be more comfortable for everyone if she let the lamb drink little and often. I then put a collar on her in anticipation of needing something to hold. Let them out after bub had had his drink. Fifteen minutes later I see…..

Winner! 😀

Lots of single lambs being born at the moment. Will try catch up on them tomorrow if the weather is good enough. Only one set of twins born today.

Will finish on a sight this afternoon that makes me smile.