The kids, the Maremmas and The Great Roo Fence
Victory is at last mine! For the past few days since The Roo Fence was extended beyond The End to become The Great Roo Fence, we have seen around 20 kangaroos on the farm each night – down from several hundred.
It’s been a roller-coaster ride, trying to make something out of that part of the farm. When I first took over the reins, I lavished it with care, refencing, installing new water lines and troughs, planting trees, breaking up the subsoil and resowing pastures. The local gossips said it wouldn’t be long before I went bust, spending money like water. And, in part, they were right. We’re still here but the fruits of our labours were simply ravished by the roos every dawn and dusk.
Having been thus chastened by Mother Nature, I decided to bide my time until the kangaroo problem was fixed, redeveloping the less vulnerable half of the farm across the road instead. I chatted with researchers about dingo urine, investigated the efficacy of sonic deterrents, then bought, reared and trained Maremma pups. Got a kangaroo cull licence but couldn’t follow through.
Now, here we are, with 20 roos on the place, a carefully crafted business plan and a much wiser head. It’s a new era for the farm and I can’t wait to get started.
The Milk Maid Marian 
Congratulations on winning the fight Marian – long may it continue (as long as those 20 stubborn roo’s don’t breed and show their youngsters the way in, otherwise you’d be back to square one!)
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You’re right, Kaye, there’s always going to be a lot of maintenance but it has to be better than what we’ve been dealing with!
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Well done!
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Great news. You’re doing much better than I and friends with the Goat kids and foxes. Final score: Weather got two mismothered kids; foxes got 13 kids; and three survived.
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Gotta love those two cute puppies…
Look at the size comparison.
🙂
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Although they’re incredibly friendly, Alex finds Charlie and Lola (the Maremmas) quite intimidating as they’re pretty much nose to nose. Alex is now 101cm tall, so they’re a decent size dog.
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I will be interested to read how the dogs work out. Sounds like a great plan. They use them a lot around here for sheep.
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Well, they work really well as a team to protect the calves they’re bonded to. No fox stands a chance but they work almost TOO well, not wanting to stray far enough from the calves to scare the roos away.
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