Month: May 2024

More babies

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It has been the season for babies. Our cows are now having calves and they are all coming fairly quickly. We have six calves on the ground now and I think there should be 1-3 more possibly. This means our bull did his job! Now only if the rams would learn from the bull, we have had the rams in with the sheep for almost two months now and Annmarie just saw them mounting a ewe the other day. We’re taking them out next week as we do not want to lamb for five months again. We will only have to lamb for two months this way. Which is a good thing as the rams are almost as wide as they are long. They are getting incredibly fat free ranging with the ewes. Everyone is fat and most of them have about half their winter coat rubbed off. The lucky few that have managed to clear their coat look great!

We did it again, and got another puppy. We have gotten used to having an ankle biter dog running around at the house. A dog with no job. We really liked the Brussel Griffin breed but the last two dogs have died young and had a lot of respiratory issues. Annmarie has been doing a lot of research and we like the terrier breed overall. We ended up getting a Border Terrier. He was over in Montana so we drove over and back in one day! Fourteen hours in the car is a little much. It has been a week now and Milo is finally settling in. He spends two days at each Grandmother’s house while we are at work. I have Fridays off so he is hanging out with me on Friday. The only real problem we are having is crate training him. We have been sleeping on the floor near the kennel in an attempt to get him used to the crate. It’s sorta working, we keep scooting the pile of blankets further away from the crate every couple of days. He does not appreciate the need for him to sleep alone. He is incredibly food driven. He can eat all of is food in about 15 seconds. So we have had to start figuring out how to slow him down. We were using a treat toy but we have to refill it three times for any meal. Our daughter told us about snuffle mats. I had no clue this was a real thing. Ours came a couple of days ago and it takes him about ten minutes to eat every meal now. This means he can actually breath while eating. Potty training is going well but going outside every hour is probably the real reason it is working.

Our lambs are doing well and we have been putting the sheep into the barn lot every night. So far, I do not think we have lost any lambs or ewes to the coyotes. I used the sheep to mow the front yard again. I am going to have to figure this out eventually after we redo the front lawn. The boom truck they are using to install the new siding is very heavy and we have large ruts in the ground now. The dogs had already been digging holes so the yard is a mess. We need to get the front rock wall completed and the short metal fence installed on top of it. On we get that done then we will kill the entire yard, regrade it, install underground sprinkler and then replant it. We want to go with some form of grass substitute that doesn’t need mowed or mowed 1-2 times a year. Once we do that the dogs will be kept out of the area around the house and can hang out on the front hillside. We are going to install the gazebo this year so the dogs can shelter out of the weather.

We want to install a drain in the center of the gazebo so that no rain or water can accumulate inside, it will also make it easier to clean out. I will put some lights and power inside but I will make sure the outlets are water proof so the gazebo can be washed down with a hose. I just need to order a couple of dump trucks of gravel to get this process started. We will be installing seven upright posts, installing the walls and then start pouring the concrete floor. We will concrete in the seven posts to provide stability and anchor the structure down to the ground.

Fencing progress

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Mr Rainman has been coming out to work on finishing up the fencing. We need to get the gate installed up at field #1. That way we can drive up alongside the wheat field and directly into the field. Otherwise, we have to drive through field three across the width, into field #2 and drive the entire length and width to get to the only access into field #1.

It took him a couple of days to get the railroad ties set, H braces installed and the gate hung. It takes the tractor with forks on it to hang the gate. You have to get the height at the exact spot before you can drill the holes and attach the gate. We will need to attach a cow panel to the gate so the sheep cannot crawl through the gate. Only the lambs are small enough but they don’t need to get out into the wheat field.

I found a spring steel T clip for attaching wire to metal T-posts that requires no tools online. I ordered a 1000 and will be testing them out. If they work then this will be a huge time saver as installing 8 clips on every T post does take time, especially if you are trying to get the bottom one on tight. Between the new clips, tractor post hole auger, the electric fence stapler and the T-post tractor bucket driver we have managed to really cut down on the time to install new fencing. Now if there was a way to get a robot to build it all that was not super expensive.

The puppy and I went to town and bought some more smooth wire high tensile strength tighteners. We then went down to the four corners field and started working on digging holes. We need to get the railroad ties installed and 3-5 round wooden posts. The T-posts will fill in the rest of the fence. I had forgotten that a lot of the holes had been drilled last year. I managed to clean out two, start in on a third and dig a ledge into a 16’ section of hillside to create a flat spot for the fence. We have to hang a panel over the ditch for water runoff. Once we get that fence installed then the animals will be able to clean up that corner and keep it knocked down.

We had 1.68” of rain last weekend so nothing got done outside. It is now almost 80 F this weekend so all of the greenery is shooting up again. Luckily, Mr Rainman had most of the spraying done except some backpack work alongside the ditch. So our fields are looking great and this year we hit most of the fence lines with RoundUp and that is helping our weed management. In another month we will have to start spraying the hillside for yellow star thistle. It has not emerged yet, it has not been hot enough.

We are also going to set up a gate that can be closed across the driveway when we are working cows. No more stray cows barreling down the driveway and jumping across the cattle guard. The gate will just stay open all of the time until we are working the animals. That is the majority of the fencing that needs to be done this year. We are going to have to start haying in about six weeks.