Episode 3
NZ Screening date 25 February 2004

Saturday, the morning after the night before, and somehow Lex convinces Jo and Lou that a good run is the best way to shake off a hangover…especially when it is only 7 degrees outside…bbrrrr.

Following on from this the one shower at the house is in great demand, but a City Girl never compromises on looking her best.

Jo and Lou get to work on the plan for the rest of the day, and this kicks off with a trip to Paul the dairy farmer’s place to have ago at clay bird shooting, and Paul’s mate Dave, a former New Zealand Clay-Bird Shooting champion is along to give the best possible tuition. For those who still haven’t downed a single bird Dave pulls out the big guns…in this case that proves to be a bigger gun!

The girls head home to ready themselves for the next thing on the list, a beauty therapy session, and upon arrival at the house find another present from Farmer Matt, yet another orphaned lamb, who is given the name “Lucky”, in the hope that this will give him an edge that Moses and Summer didn’t have.

Just as the five girls are about to leave in search of sun-beds the phone rings and Presto is on the other end…he needs help and he needs it now! Jo selflessly volunteers to assist and Kristy agrees to be the film crew as they help Presto and his wife Annie to get a cow through a difficult delivery.

The calf is just too big to get out under its own power, and even the combined efforts of a whole team of humans is not proving enough…Presto uses the ATV but its hindquarters are still stuck fast and he thinks that it may already be dead, but Annie doesn’t give up hope, as it happens the calf didn’t make it but the cow survived so all was not lost. Not quite the way Jo expected the day to turn out!

A new week and Kate and Kristy are helping up at the crack of dawn helping Matt with deer, a new experience for any of the City Girls.

Matt and the girls have to look through all of these three-year-old hinds and sort out the “elite” hinds from the rest…these special deer have a large white tag on their ears that identify them and the are monitored more thoroughly than the others.

Kate has a go at asserting her authority over the deer, but it turns out to be closer to a draw than anything else!
On Presto’s farm Lou, Jo and Lex find that animals can be very co-operative if there is a meal in the offing, and the trend towards giving everything that moves a name has gathered pace, with Lou contributing some really memorable ones.

The three girls go out on a lambing beat by themselves and happen upon a ewe in difficulty…as soon as Presto sees her he knows what has to happen, but the killing still shakes the girls, even though Jo says that she is getting used to it (yeh, riiiight !).Brave words from a committed vegetarian, but as Lex lends a hand Jo seems to be drifting ever further from the vicinity of the butchery. In the end Jo gives it her all by helping with the slicing and dicing of the ex-ewe as the other two encourage her, but she doesn’t seem too upset when Lou takes over the really gory stuff!

A new day and for the first time all five City Girls get to work together to help Presto to dock 3200 lambs. He has gathered some of his usual docking gang but the five girls will be invaluable help if he is going to get through the massive number of sheep in good time.

The first task is to separate the lambs from their mothers, so as to avoid the little ones getting squashed in the crowd of adult animals, and the docking gang do this by using a long strip of hessian and forming a human chain.

This done, every lamb goes into a shoot to have its ear cut,(to show who it belongs to), a mark scratched on its leg (to prevent a disease called scrapi), a rubber band around the testicles and then to complete the fun day out for the lambs their tails are cut off…wonder what second prize was!

Presto, as with all experts, makes it look easy, but there is no doubt that this is hard, hard work, and by days end the City Girls go home absolutely knackered (if the lambs will pardon the phrase!).