You are employed on a tablelands property that grows cherries, wool and prime lambs. It has been a cold winter with many frosts and one light snowfall. The Bureau of Meteorology has issued a Sheep Grazier’s Alert for the next 48 hours and the severe cold weather is expected to continue.
You use the farm 4WD ute each day to cart hay and monitor the lambing Merino ewes. This morning it was hard to start and later the temperature gauge was in the hot zone. As you are responsible for maintaining the farm vehicles the best course of action is to:
Write a note to remind yourself to give the ute a thorough service next week.
Blame the very cold weather for the ute not going as well as usual.
Not worry about it – farm utes are wonderful work horses.
Reschedule today’s tasks so that you have time to check the water and oil levels and tyre pressures and to put the battery on an overnight charge.
The next morning you find five dead lambs and the ewes and lambs are huddled against the fence in the exposed paddock. You should:
Leave the flock where they are in the lambing paddock as it still has enough green feed.
Move the flock to a more protected paddock that has longer dry feed and a timbered hillside.
Muster the flock and move them to the river paddock that can be seen distantly from the homestead.
Ring the neighbours to find out how many lambs they lost in the night.
Snow falls for three days and then heavy frosts turn the snow to ice. Many of the ewes have given birth, there are a number of twins and some lambs have not bonded with their mothers. Foxes or wild dogs, which are common in the area, have killed two ewes. The most appropriate course of action is to:
Check the flock twice daily and bring home abandoned lambs to be hand-reared.
Separate the ewes from the lambs and put them in different paddocks.
Set up a gas-fired scare gun in the lambing paddock to frighten away the dogs and foxes.
Telephone your city relatives to come and see the snow.
It is early spring and the cherries are starting to flower. Frosts are still common at this time of year and can damage the crop. The boss has ordered a new frost protection fan for the cherry orchard. You receive a phone call from a truck depot in town to say that the fan has arrived. The most appropriate action is to:
Tell the depot manager that you will pick up the fan next week.
Leave a note among the piles of papers on the farm office desk saying that the fan is at the depot.
Arrange to collect the fan that day and assist the boss to get it set up in the cherry orchard.