Nearly the end of the line.

Greg and one of the trucks taking the cattle away from Kilcowera.

 

 The dust storms at the end of September and early October have just about wrecked our country and as a consequence we have mustered 95% of the cattle off Kilcowera.  We didn’t have many left on the place and did have them spread right out but with the Mulga now totally coated in dust there is nothing for them to eat.  We still have a couple of hundred on Zenonie and I suppose they will go soon too.   I was so sad to see our cows and their little calves and weaners being trucked off the place I didn’t want to ask what happens next.

If only we could get an inch of rain to clean the mulga up, but no, not for us.  This is our ninth year of drought and we have only had 28 mls of rain this year, so I think this is our worst year of all.

 We started here with a pretty ordinary, small herd of mixed up Brahmin cross cattle when we bought the place and by constantly buying good Hereford bulls and putting them with the cows and then culling the offspring for temperament, and type we had built up a nice herd of cattle. Mostly quiet cows who knew the country, where to get a feed and a drink in the dry times and with high fertility rates. 

The cows have gone to Moree where a Drover is taking them on a stock route for a few weeks, supposedly there is plenty of feed and they will put some weight on and freshen up.  The poor old girls will enjoy the grass anyway, it’s a long time since there has been any here.  We’ll then advertise them for sale and they will be sold through the Moree saleyards.  We have been told there are lots of paddocks down that way with either a failed crop or a paddock of stubble from a harvested crop where the farmers will put stock into to fatten them up.

 All that we have left here now are a few bulls, some cows that had tiny calves or who were about to calve and the odd one we missed.  And Feral, the quarters resident poddy who will spend the summer here mowing the lawn.