Cowboy arrived, as Penny predicted, well before the agreed start time of 7am. A quick coffee was drunk and Toby said hello to everyone, and the branding day commenced. Cowboy, his granddaughter, Tara, Penny, Eric, Tim, James and Jamie were all involved in a production line. The calves had to be branded with the farm’s brand, tagged with an ear tag and the male calves had to be castrated, which was a job left in Cowboy’s capable hands. Toby and I watched for a little while, but to be honest, it was a little to much for me.
For Jamie the process was very interesting getting hand on with the process of branding. He got involved opening and closing the right doors at the right time to let the cows in an out of the branding pen. The process was in two parts. Branding the young calves, castration if required, tagging with a number and tacking tag. The second was giving vaccinations and tick treatment to the cow parents.
Toby did some excellent crawling practice; he can propel himself forward using one knee and one foot, but fortunately he isn’t very quick yet! He also has a good go at pulling himself up to standing, and sometimes succeeds! If he could just hold off on all these skills until we get home, that would be excellent. I’m not sure I want to see how hard a 24 hour flight can be with a crawling baby…
After all of the fun of branding we had a further visit from the bee man to move the bees from their temporary home to their new shiny flow hive. We were surprised how docile the bees became with a puff of smoke. It’s also a pain to locate the queen bee, which has to be replaced every two years for best honey production apparently.
After all of this fun it was time to say goodbye to Penny and Eric. Thank them for a fantastic couple of weeks where they spoilt us all rotten and head up to Cairns for the last part of our trip. We hit the road for the 3.5 hour drive up the A1 to Cairns.
We arrived at around 9pm at our Cairns accommodation and straight to bed.
