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We drove north from Mount Lyford to Kaikoura for lunch, it's such a pretty little seaside town with a lot more tourists than we'd come across so far. We had lunch at a restaurant run by friends of Josie which was really yummy and we were overlooking the beach where wild dolphins were splashing about in the distance - so cool!
We the hopped back in our trusty car and headed up the coast, stopping off for a photo of a seal colony who were just chilling on the rocks! After a few snaps we continued driving up to Bluff Station in Kekerengu which is a huge sheep and cattle station owned by friends of Josie's mum. We had a cup of tea then borrowed their ute and went off exploring, Josie had worked here for a few months during uni so knew her way around, the scenery was absolutely stunning and literally everything you could see was owned by this family. The farm was about 30,000 acres! They have just under 10,000 sheep, 800 cows and about 1000 youngstock - insane! The sheep are merino, which is a breed famous for their wool and the family have a contract with a clothing company for their wool which is worth a fair bit of money. We had a look at the wool shed which is where they do the shearing - a different story to when I was shearing in the Isle of Man just out the back of a trailer! The wool shed had two floors with holding pens underneath then the sheep are pushed up to the other floor where they are clipped then popped down a little shute back into the pens. The wool is graded at the time and packed into big bales ready to leave the farm.
We had a delicious tea, most of the home cooked meals we've had have consisted of meat, salad and scrummy roast potatoes - I like the kiwi style!
We got up early the next day, 6am, to go out and help load lambs into a big trailer so they could be moved from one area of the farm to another. The son, Hamish, has a team of 6 dogs, 3 hunterways (loud bark, long legs), 2 herding dogs (keplie/collie type things) and a black labrador whose function was just to retrieve the odd quail and be a pet! We had to collect up a few lost lambs wo parked up the ute and legged it on foot with the dogs, it was so hard to keep up on such steep hills but got to see the dogs working which was so good.
We loaded the first trailer of lambs fine then had a few hours to wait for it to come back empty so we went off to check on the cattle. They have hereford and angus cattle as there are studs for each breed nearby, it's amazing to see these massive animals running up and down the hills as you wouldn't think they'd be able to move that quick. We ushered them back into the right field with the dogs then drove down to the shepherds accomodation for a quick lunch. Loaded the other lot of lambs then followed the truck and pushed the lambs through a foot dip, then back to the house for a shower before setting off for the next stop.
Photos - hope they work, let me know if no-one can open them
https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=36125b0680f42cbe#cid=36125B0680F42CBE&id=36125B0680F42CBE%21229
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