G’day, I’m Ian Frost, but everyone who knows me calls me Frosty.
As you can see from my picture, I’ve been around for almost half a century. That’s Dozer with me. He’d like to tell you a thing or two about how dedicated we are to animals here in Australia but he has his work cut out puppy sitting so the job has come to me.
I’m looking forward to dropping you a line to let you know from the horse’s mouth (so to speak) how we actually care for animals here in Australia and throughout the livestock export industry.
So who am I? Well, I was brought up on a farm near Hopetoun, Victoria. For almost all of my life I have been around animals. (For a couple of years I played football in Melbourne but we will not include that.)
I suppose animals have been my life, and I know that when you look after animals, most of the time they will look after you.
I have worked for KLTT (Kuwait Livestock Transport & Trading) for 24 years now and I suppose I have done just about everything there is to do in the industry handling livestock.
Right now I work in quality control, which is a fancy way of saying I make sure everything is up to scratch with the sheep, in feedlots and on board the ships.
This has to happen before any ship sets sail. When I was a stockman I used to travel with the animals but I’m happy to keep my feet on dry land these days and leave the onboard travel to the vets and other stockmen.
One thing that annoys me about some people is that many think they know animals when they actually don’t. It’s not as simple as cats and dogs. To really care for animals you need to know about animals. Different breeds have different requirements and we make it our business to know all about the animals we care for. Some people don’t even seem to know which end of the animal eats the grass, let alone how the industry treats them.
That’s why I think this website is a great idea as it gives the real story on how livestock exports work.
I was busy with a ship last week and another this week and I’m looking forward to some time off when I head over to my sons wedding in Queensland next year. But I’ll be checking in here from time to time to drop you a line and let you know what’s going on with the latest shipment out of Australia. We’ll see how we get on but I might also shoot through the odd update on what is happening in the industry and you might even hear my opinion on a few things.
Some of my colleagues in the industry might pop in every now and then and add their two cents worth - a few stockmen and vets - maybe we’ll even drag in a ship’s Captain if we’re lucky!
Keep checking back here for updates, or you can subscribe with this RSS thing and be told when the blog is updated. If you want to send your comments or feedback you can email me at: stockman@liveexportcare.com
In the meantime, have a look through the site and find out a few facts on Australian livestock exports.
Hooroo
Frosty