Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
This year we are grateful for a wet start to the winter in the Highveld, with our water table recharged and the dams and pans still full of water.
My late grandfather, who decided to focus on sheep because he hated the early hours associated with dairy farming, would not have been grateful. He feared a wet winter, for that is when bacteria lay waste to stressed sheep and scabby mites thrive in long wool.
Since his day, agricultural practices have advanced a lot, and granddad would appreciate two of the modern ways we now farm sheep.
The first is the gentle handling techniques we teach the staff to avoid stressing the animals, especially during injections and shearing. The second is to work with our neighbours. The old joke of getting four churches and five political parties after you stranded three boere on an island is as outdated as long-tailed ewes.
Unite to beat mites
Instead, if they want to show a profit, modern sheep producers have to coordinate their efforts to combat our two common enemies, namely mites and livestock thieves.
Thanks to such coordination, fighting Psoroptes ovis – the microscopic mite causing sheep scab in especially wet winters – has become an easy battle in my district. We simply time the application of ivermectin on our respective farms to ensure we all hit the mites in the same week in May and so far, Psoroptes have been kept at bay.
Fighting the livestock thieves, however, is an ongoing battle, with the syndicates seeming to get more brazen and more organised each year.
This year’s Nampo again showcased a plethora of digital solutions to help the producer guard the herd or flock against two-legged predators. Stockfarm also reported on an important initiative by the Red Meat Producers’ Organisation to report livestock thefts via the WhatsApp number 071 515 2011, to draw a bigger picture that security providers and policy makers can use in the national fight against livestock theft.
But expensive experience has taught that in the veld, far from GPS signals and cameras monitoring farm roads, nothing beats a perimeter patrol guard with a two-way radio who can raise the alarm in case of suspicious movements or tracks.
When the call comes, dedicated teams race to block access routes while others converge at the scene of the crime. The younger ones scout ahead on motorbikes, while us more rounded personalities follow in our bakkies. Because stock theft has become a grim business with everyone going out armed with at least a pistol, the potential for injuries from friendly fire is always a danger.
Hence, we practise our responses for when a real alarm call comes in. Our last practice run had the response time down to minutes and I boasted about sliding my Hilux almost as fast around the corners as Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings, who placed second in the Dakar Rally earlier this year.
The right tyres for the win
Gert, our farm mechanic, had a good laugh at my boasting, saying the mud-terrain tyres he had me put on my Hilux was the closest I came to professional rally racers like Lategan and his navigator Cummings, who also competed in the inaugural South African Safari Rally which Toyota Gazoo Racing hosted in North West recently.
Nodding dismissively at the other tyre brands on show, Gert advised all of us first responders to also get mud-terrain tyres.
“Tyres are the most important part of a vehicle when driving off-road. These tyres are made in Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal and the fact that they sponsored the Prologue of May’s Rally-Raid Championship shows how confident they are that their tyres can handle the toughest conditions.
In fact, the guys who planned the Rally-Raid route drove over 8 000km with lots of bush and riverbed sections included and they didn’t even suffer a slow puncture. That is why I have mud-terrain tyres fitted to all our farm bakkies,” Gert said.
