Inverell Saleyard

Yesterday, we went to Inverell (which is about 40mins drive from Warialda) for the weekly saleyard held at the Inverell Livestock Exchange. It was quite interesting as I'd never been before. There were a little over 2000 cattle and 4000 sheep put on display. I saw some of the fattest cattle but also some of the skinniest cattle I've ever seen in my life. The animals were auctioned off to the highest bidder and it's important not to wave flies away from your face during the auction, lest you end up with a dozen bulls by mistake! I was told that 2 girls who came to Warialda previously almost ended up with 6 bullocks because they waved at someone during an auction, then the person they were waving at almost bought the cattle too cos he waved back... luckily someone then bid higher than that for the cattle and took them off their hands... *phew* that would've been difficult to explain to your parents when you come home... *hehehe*

We didn't do much inspection of the cattle, but just walked around and had a general look at them. The sheep, however, we went into pens and immobilised them (by sitting them on their backsides) and had looks through their fleece to look for lice. There were quite a few dodgy-looking sheep there, but when we went through their fleece, we didn't see any lice. Maybe they had been treated for it already, but they still looked pretty daggy and had big breaks in their wool.

I'm still only a quarter way through my second assignment and am procrastinating hard right now. I really really want to finish it before the end of this week so I won't have to worry about it as soon as I leave this place on Friday, but I just can't seem to gather enough concentration power to do it. Then I've still got the communication task to go, but this shouldn't be too difficult as it only needs to be a page or two of work. And this can be done together with Paige (the other girl here), so it definitely is a task we can complete in a short period of time.

We're supposed to be going to see a warty steer very shortly, and the DV has been saying he'll take us to a fish farm nearby, where I was hoping I could score a fresh fish for dinner. I hope that happens today! I would so love some fresh fish meat right now!