Sue Scott fully acknowledges that sheep need care, and unless looked after diligently can be a lot of trouble. 

Sue Scott - quite at home with her friends. Photos Crispin Caldicott.

In her teens, Sue decided she wanted a farm. When she and her husband, Roger, found their block of land she decided it would be ideal for realising her dream of breeding her own flock of Romney Suffolk Cross sheep.

“To start with we had a couple of acres near suburbia, and I thought it would be nice for our children to have lambs,” she told Rural Living.

“While we raised the lambs I learned about their health care by asking questions of farmers, our vet, and also reading books.

“I didn’t have access to all the useful information you can get from Google today when I started farming, in a sense I had to learn all the practical stuff the hard way often through mistakes.

“As a family learning experiment it was pretty successful, but we had some savage dog attacks that brought it to an end.”

Four years ago the Scott family moved to a 60 acre block near the Kaipara.

The land is quite steep, which Sue considers a big advantage given sheep’s susceptibility to foot rot.

“Because our land drains so well the sheep thrive on these hillier conditions, the only drawback is the dryness of summer.

“Sheep are much kinder on the land than bigger stock.

“We do have horses here, and our regime in the winter is to let the sheep graze after them so the sheep flatten out all the pugs made by the horses.  We end up with pretty smooth paddocks.”

After the very dry summer and autumn, with no flush of grass to help keep condition on her pregnant ewes, Sue had to start hard feeding her flock from April through to lambing in August.

“I had to hard feed to keep my ewes in condition. Developing lambs take a lot out of Ewes, and it is to their detriment if you don’t keep them in good condition.

“It took some time to teach the old ewes to accept hard feed.

“I found if I fed my pet lambs first, the older ewes watched and learnt how to feed from them. “I fed my ewes silage and sheep pellets – expensive, but much better than losing them to starvation.

“I had a few losses, but through vigilance and daily feeding they were small.”

Roger, Sue’s husband, is approaching the age when he would like to take life easier, so the couple are thinking of concentrating more upon sheep, and with their acreage it is viable.  “Like any chore, if you enjoy it, it is not nearly so much trouble,” Sue continued.

“I have a clear regime now and the flock get daily attention and I rotate them through the paddocks weekly. There are things you can only learn by experience.

“For example sheep build up immunities to oral drenches over time, so it is important to rotate them, and I only drench half my flock at a time to help counteract resistance.

“You have to be careful about the withholding periods with drenches and keep careful records prior to taking your animals to market.”

For fly strike Sue uses a pour on – which is actually sprayed on to the animal’s back.

It works really well according to Sue especially in the summer months when the sheep are most vulnerable to fly strike which is really distressing to the animal.

Sheep can be  vulnerable to all manner of health problems and it is much better to be in a position to treat any aliment before it becomes an expensive vet visit. 

“Despite all the work and the problems, I find sheep gentle animals with a lot of personality and once they learn something they never forget it.”