Whanganui Chronicle reporter Fin Ocheduszko Brown tries sheep dagging and mustering for I'm New to This summer series.
Whanganui Chronicle reporter Fin Ocheduszko Brown tries sheep dagging and mustering for I'm New to This summer series.
Over the summer Chronicle journalists have been trying their hand at something new, under the supervision of experts.
Today, Fin Ocheduszko Brown musters up the courage to muster sheep.
An early morning drive from the Guyton St office to Ohakune was required from me to fulfil a bit ofa bucket-list activity for me: working on a farm.
I have been a “city boy” for my entire life.
I was born in Nottingham, United Kingdom, which had a population of just under 300,000 during the early 2000s, and then moved to Christchurch, a city of nearly 420,000.
I’d never been around the rural way of life until moving to Whanganui for work in November 2024, where I have learned lots about the farming world.
I was kindly welcomed by Whanganui Federated Farmers provincial president and Horizons Regional Council Whanganui representative Ben Fraser to his parents’ farm in Ohakune.
The task for the morning was to dag and muster about 30 hogget ewes to be transported to Ben’s hill block farm near Raetihi.
An abundance of farming terminology was introduced to me, which I will, in turn, introduce to you.
Dagging is the process of removing the dirty, woolly clumps of faeces from a sheep’s backside for hygienic purposes and to prevent flystrike, a painful infestation where fly maggots eat the sheep’s flesh.
Ben said dagging also allowed shearers to come and do their job quicker and easier.
A hogget ewe, in simplified terms, refers to a young female sheep that has grown beyond the lamb stage but is not yet considered a mutton.
Hoggets are typically between 1 to 2 years old and muttons are over the age of 2.
Ben talked and walked me through the key to a successful dagging session.
He taught me how to keep a sheep stable by setting your knees and feet in a strong position, while allowing enough movement to reach down low and shave around the rear.
After watching him dag two, I stepped up to try my luck.
Man, was it tough to complete the task. Especially with an animal that doesn’t realise what we are doing will help them and is for their own good.
I ended up dagging six sheep, start to finish; from getting a hold, shearing and letting them on their way – it was a challenge.
After around 35 minutes of hard yakka and sweating like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky, my already high-level respect for farmers went up a notch.
Fraser told me to imagine fulltime shearers who do that day in, day out. To that, I say ‘fair play’.
Ben's dog Bax mustered the ewes into a separate paddock.
Once we loaded the sheep onto two trailers, we headed to Ben’s Raetihi hill block farm.
We were taking them to the hill block because there was more grass available to feed on, as they had not had lambs during lambing season.
The ewes may stay there for several years and lambing seasons.
Once we had unloaded the sheep into the first paddock, our work was pretty much done because Ben’s dog Bax took control and guided the sheep into the neighbouring paddock.
It was incredible to see the work of Bax, as I have always been fascinated with how dogs play a part in farming.
It was cool to see the precision and accuracy he used in calculating how much space to allow the sheep to move, while anticipating when a sheep was veering off-course.
A steep walk up the hill and drive back to the township of Raetihi was followed by a drink, chips and apple slice before we went our separate ways.
The only thing to come was something I hadn’t anticipated. As I drove back to the office for more than an hour, I was overcome by an irritating itchiness.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have mixed myself up with so much dry wool in the morning after all.
Fin Ocheduszko Brown is a multimedia journalist based in Whanganui.
