Maths is really important when living on a farm and it is used in lots of different ways. For example, we need to jag the sheep with medicine to keep them healthy and fit, and also to keep the baby lambs healthy when they are born next year. It is important to make sure that we calculate the correct amount of medicine for each sheep, so that they don’t get too much or too little.
The medicine packet told us that we needed 1ml of medicine for each sheep and there was 100ml in each medicine packet. So, we worked out that 1 packet would doze 100 sheep. We counted the sheep and there were 396 sheep to doze, so we needed 4 packets to give us enough medicine.
The medicine barrel on the jagging machine that we had held 2ml of fluid, but we needed 1ml. We therefore measured the length of the barrel that holds the medicine – this measured 3.5cm. Because 1ml is half of 2ml, we worked out what half of 3.5cm was, and this was 1.75cm. We set the barrel on the gun at 1.75cm because we knew that this would give each sheep 1ml of medicine.
After dozing all the sheep we had 4 dozes left, or we would have done, if Dad hadn’t put one into his finger!
