Quite a crazy week weather wise this one. Started off with sunshine on Monday and then on Tuesday we had quite the cocktail of events. It was humid in the morning and then hot/sunny around lunch. Then late afternoon there was a hail storm, followed by a thunderstorm that night. The rest of the week was a mixture of rain and overcast days so not much sunshine at all.

Unfortunately for me I was out in the paddock when the hail storm hit and there wasn't much cover around. I ended up crawling underneath the quad as best I could to avoid the worst of the hail. Needless to sail I was left quite cold and wet!!

This week has been much like the last couple with the days spent feeding and checking the cattle. In a normal day breakfast is at 7.30 with an 8 o'clock start, lunch is at 12 then work through to 5pm. Supper is normally between 5 and 6 then we head back out around 7pm to do the last check and back by 8 providing there are no issues. I sometimes do the morning check so start at 6am, which can make it a long day!!

There seems to be at least one heifer a day that needs help calving and then every other day there is a cow or calf with some problem or other. Perry is a bit annoyed with the heifers because the bulls he put over them are meant to be proven heifer bulls that breed small calves. There have been quite a few bigger ones so he has sent away hair for DNA samples.

We have also started to take pairs out of the paddocks. Which pretty much means you have to ride around causing chaos and try to cut cows and calves out of the mob. It is relatively easy once you get into the swing of it, but eventually the dry cows decide they want to go into the fresh paddock as well and you spend half your time racing to the gate to block them from going through. I suppose this is where the tagging comes in handy because you actually know which cow owns which calf.

On Wednesday Perry and I did some work with one of the young horses here. It was quite the eye opener for me because it was nothing like what I had ever seen. It isn't halter broken so he just put it in a little pen then got in there and after much banging and crashing got the halter rope over its neck and eventually the halter over its head. He then proceeded to put it in a larger pen and tie it up straight away. Needless to say he pulled back and carried on but eventually settled down. I'm not sure if it is the best introduction to people for a horse but that is the way Perry does it. Since then I have been doing a little bit with him each day but its hard because there is no round yard and I'm not really sure what I'm doing. He won't be broken to a saddle until next year though.

Other than that life just keeps poking along. I have been speaking to Pa and Candice this week and all seems to be going well back in Australia. We will hopefully start branding in the next couple of weeks and I am looking forward to that. Most of it will be done by roping and dragging the calves to the fire, although they bought a 'tipping table' (calf cradle) this year so I might be teaching them a thing or two about using that!!