Muster (livestock)
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A muster, in Australia is a roundup of livestock, usually cattle, sheep or horses, but may also include goats, camels, buffalo or other animals.
Mustering may be conducted for a variety of reasons including routine livestock health checks and treatments, branding, shearing, lamb marking, sale, feeding and transport or droving to another location.
Methods include mustering on foot, with various vehicles, horses or with aircraft. Dogs are typically used where it is possible or helpful to do so. It may be difficult or impossible to use dogs in hot, dry or burry conditions. The use of some dogs on cows with young calves may be counter productive as cows will spend much time chasing dogs that work too close to them. The hardy Australian Kelpie or one of its crosses is the most popular breed of dog for sheep and cattle mustering.
Foot mustering is usually reserved for rounding up quiet or small mobs that are close to the designated destination. This method may also be used in the Southern Alps of New Zealand where it is considered too steep to safely use horses. In this case the stockman and his dogs would be dropped from a helicopter onto the higher slopes to bring the sheep down, possibly before winter.
Quite a few low stress stock handling schools are now run to educate stockmen and some helicopter pilots in the working of cattle especially and sheep as well.
A subtitile for the Sydney Royal Easter Show is The Great Australian Muster.
[edit] References
Beattie, W.A. "Beef Cattle Breeding and Management", Popular Books, 1980
[edit] See also
- Stockhorse
- Damper (food) campfire bread
- Drover (Australian)
- Stockmen
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