Month: December 2023

Lambing update week 6, 12/2023

Steve HardinLeave a comment

This has been a weird lambing season. We have only had 7% of our born lambs be female. The wife keeps telling me that “grain is for girls and grass is for guys” when it comes to helping your gender outcome by feeding a certain diet. All of these ewes were on grass only when they conceived but we have never had such a disparate difference before.

I had to spend some time this weekend expanding the momma/baby area in the barn to accommodate the babies. As the ewes continue to give birth we will shrink their area one more time before we are done. But it has to be right at the end of the birthing cycle as we will need to use about half the jug walls to make the last wall in the barn. Once we do that we can only have three jugs for newly born lambs/mommas.

The chores are now taking about three hours a day when split between the morning baby check and the evening feeding. I had to feed the boys in Alcatraz tonight and the bull, “big red” is getting way too comfortable with me. I open up the old lamb shed and he just walks in and starts eating off the hay pile. I try to push past him with a bale and he head butts it. So we have a shoving match at the doorway as I try and get it out the door. Tonight I pushed on his head to get him out and he just shook me off. I got behind him and lightly smacked him on hind quarters like a horse and told him to get out of the shed, he did. As long as he thinks it’s his idea he is okay with moving out of the way.

It is 44F tonight so moving the large bales with the Kubota is painful. We have to plow through six inches of mud to get to where we need to drop off the bales. I am hopeful that Winter will actually get here in January. It is a lot easier feeding the cows on frozen ground.

  • Date of update- Dec 27 2023
  • # of Lambs born – 28
  • # of ewes who have delivered babies – 18
  • # of ewes still pregnant – 16 in area, I don’t think they are all pregnant
  • # of single lamb births – 9
  • # of twin lamb births – 8
  • # of triplet lamb births – 1
  • # tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-18
  • # tagged female lambs-a
  • # of bummer lambs – 1
  • # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 4
  • Total # of lambs on farm -23
  • % birthing rate- 156%
  • % production rate -128%
  • % survival rate at birth – 100%
  • % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 82%

Annmarie spotted this rooster in a wild rose bush, we think he was eating the berries. We have been spotting more owls on the place but at night they are hard to distinguish. Our daughter finally just googled what they sound like, duh. They are very noisy at first dark and the last two hours of the night. We do have a pair of great horned owls again. We also have a pair of barn owls. We are certain of those but I have seen Pygmy owls in the past and I am hopeful they will pass through again. The bunnies are definitely multiplying, we are now spotting three on the drive down the driveway. The owls and hawks can concentrate on knocking down the vole population, they don’t need to eat the rabbits.

Flooded bathroom

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It all started out so innocently. I needed to water my upstairs plants and finish planting my starts for Christmas presents. This meant that I needed to plug in my expandable water hose for watering the breeze porch. Now I had a kerfuffle a couple of weeks ago and the hose leaked causing a significant amount of water to leak out onto the floor. It took me four shower towels to absorb it all and clean up the mess. This time I worked on repotting plants and watering all of my plants and totally ignoring my hose connection in the bathroom. Forty five minutes after I started working on the porch I finished and went into the bathroom to shut off the water. Yep, I should have checked the water in the first five minutes of using it. It took me seven towels (all the unused ones we had left in the cupboard), two rugs and two hand towels to get all of the water cleaned up. There was so much water I had to get a garbage sack to hold the towels so I could carry them down to the washing machine without making a water mess all through the house. On the plus side, when we installed the upstairs bathroom tile floor we used a waterproofing paint on treatment and then used a pool synthetic grout to create a space that would hold water in case the toilet overflowed. Well the toilet has not overflowed a single time but I have flooded the room twice so far.

I fired up the washing machine and about 20 minutes later the machine started to make funny noises. We have been having some issues with the machine not being evenly balanced when it spins. I have been sitting on the machine when it spins to counteract this effect. So as I am sitting on the washing machine I notice the sound getting louder and a weird smell emanating from the machine, almost a burnt smell. The washer died about five minutes later. Of course the machine is half full of water and soap. I fished out the towels and placed them outside over our fence. My hope was they would lose about half the water out of them before they froze solid. So now we have no washing machine. I will call for a repair on Monday but with the holidays I am sure there will be some delay.

The heating company fixed our drain pump again. There is a new condensate pump and there is now a waterproof tray around the pump with a water sensor. So if the pump fails or leaks the water sensor turns off the entire heating system. I am tired of repairing the craft room ceiling after the pump leaks. I have the repair on my list for first thing next year.

Hopefully, the chicken wire will go up soon enclosing the entire chicken yard in a metal protective mesh. One could hypothesize that the area will be predator proof but there is no real such area. It will be predator resistant.

It has been cold lately and the alpaca have finally come in off the hill and are now hanging around the cars and eating on the large bale of alfalfa. Annmarie keeps treats for them in the trunk of her car so when she pulls up to the house they all come running for “alpaca cookies”.

Lambing week 4 update 2023

Steve HardinLeave a comment
  • Date of update Dec 17, 2023
  • # of lambs born — 15
  • # of ewes who have delivered babies – 8
  • # of ewes still pregnant – 23-29, I don’t think they are all pregnant
  • # single lamb births – 2
  • # twin lamb births – 5
  • # triplet lamb births – 1
  • # tagged weathers (neutered boys) – 9
  • # tagged female lambs – 1
  • # of bummer lambs – 1
  • # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 4
  • Total # of lambs on farm – 10
  • % birthing rate – 188%
  • % of production rate – 125%
  • % survival rate at birth – 100%
  • % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 67%
  • # ewes with clipped ears for culling – 3

Well it has been a long week, we had all of our triplets die. We are still not sure of the exact cause. We switched the supplement we were feeding the newborns as we cannot get any more locally. We have ordered more and will be switching back to giving the supplement the first day of a lamb’s life. We are hoping that the supplement change is the correction we need. The latest twin mother forgot one of the lambs and after being in the jug with them she rejected one lamb so we had to bummer it out. All of this and no more births has totally tanked the 2 week survival rate and our production rate. The sheep are deciding to take another break in birthing. I am hopeful that we will not go another three weeks before lambs start to appear again. The sheep come into a fertility cycle every 3 weeks.

We have installed our creep feeder into a section of the momma/baby area. It has been two days and no lambs are going in to eat yet. I am hopeful that the lambs will discover it soon, as it takes quite a load off of the momma sheep.

To correct our lamb survival rate we are clipping the ear of any ewe that loses a lamb this round. We will cull every single one of them this spring. We have more ewes than we currently want and this should help stabilize our survival rate. We will know next year.

Since we are both going to work early now, I have been getting up at 0345 to go out to the barn and take care of all the sheep and any new lambs. Annmarie is now doing the evening chores as it fits in better with her new work schedule. I feed the cows and the boys in Alcatraz every other day.