My baby chickens are not doing their part in our relationship.  They are not staying alive and everyone else is not laying eggs.  Definitely, a one sided relationship.  The babies I bought late last year are just dying.  I would like to say it is a predator for certain but I know several that cooked themselves against the heat lamp, and several more that froze themselves to death by not going into the coop, two more have starved to death because they cannot move the three feet to get to the food and a couple more have deformed feet and/or beaks.  I did a head count today and only counted 16 babies left out of 27 to start for a survival rate of 59%, which totally sucks.  I caught every one of the babies and tossed them out of the baby area into the main chicken coop.  I am hoping they follow the adult chickens out to water in the morning or they are going to die.  At this rate I am going to have to buy another dozen chicks this spring.  I think I am just going to plan on it.  The only bad part about that is I need to dig out the baby area, clean it all up and lay down new bedding for the new chicks.  It will be a day just to get ready for the new babies.  I could have the girls do it…

Two nights ago Annmarie and I thought we heard a chicken in its death throes.  I ran outside wearing my bathrobe, some boots and the shotgun with lantern light hanging from my pump hand.  Annmarie came out with the other lantern light and we searched all over to no avail.  My chicken door still does not work.  The chicken door guy sent me a new motor the second week of January and I have been too busy to install it.  Plus he wants me to glue the motor in place.  Good luck keeping the glue warm enough to set up.  It has been fairly warm the last few days so I popped the other motor out (comparing motor part numbers to make sure he sent me the new and improved version, he did) and glued the new one in.  I had to move the heat lamp over from the baby area to shine onto the motor.  I then tied the light in place over the clamp so the chickens could not knock it down and start a fire.  Tomorrow I should be able to hook up the door and plug in the motor to see if it actually works.  Here is hoping it works. 

There was only 3 eggs today.  The chickens are not even producing 2 dozen eggs/week.   I want to get started on the laundry room closet this week.  I brought some more tools inside the house and set up my compound miter saw outside on the old house porch.  Now I just need to measure for the shelves and see if the corner is actually 90 degrees.  I am going to install the shelve brackets first on the two walls and then attach everything to them.  This will make construction easier for me.  I just have to get all the measurements figured out before I cut anything.

Monica and I went out this morning to tag all the other lambs.  Everyone is ill here but me and she was only coughing a little bit.  The babies all got mixed in with the main herd earlier in the week then the plague was at its peak.  It is just easier to not have to carry water.  We fed every one and then started trying to match babies to mothers.  This process took quite a while as we had two babies that kept wandering all over the place and would not hang out with their mothers.  One of them kept hanging out with the lead ewe.  I am sure she was even feeding it occasionally but I knew she was not the mother.  Monica did the catching and I tagged them.  We are up to #28 on the boys and #37 on the girls.  These numbers are not a reflection of how many sheep we have had as several have been retagged and some at the start never got tagged but it is close.  I want to get Annmarie to put in a running total of all the sheep we have ever owned in our spreadsheet.  I would also like to get a Percent Productivity out of each ewe averaged over lifetime and last 12 months.   I think she has one of those already done. 

We tagged 7 new lambs and retagged one teenager who managed to lose her tag without tearing out her ear.  Zeke kept trying to sneak up on the sheep and I kept having to get him to go guard the door.  Finally, he decided he could watch the door without creeping up on the sheep. 
We had another teenager chicken die.  Crazy thing went outside and refused to come back in and froze to death.  These chickens were incredibly healthy as baby chicks but I think they sacrificied a large portion of their nonexistent IQ in the process.  They seem even dumber than a normal chicken.  I am hoping to get out and replace the chicken door motor this week.  My chicken door guy sent me a new motor in the hopes that will fix the problem.  I hope so. 

The box elder bugs are out now that it is getting warmer outside. They are coming inside by the droves.  I have renamed our vacuum cleaner the “Exterminator” and vacuum them up by the hundreds.  I had to go out and get some more bug spray.  Resprayed all the windows in the house and even pulled down a ceiling tile to get at the dead space to spray.  It is working.  I have vacuumed about 40% of what I was earlier.  I found some fancy spray that I have to mix myself that lasts for months.  I am going to have to coat the house in it in a few weeks when the temperature starts staying above freezing.  I am going to buy the concentrate so I can afford to use it liberally.  I may even have to spray the old house and wood shed to cut down on breeding locations for the bugs.  The war is on!

Lots and lots of babies!  I went out yesterday morning and found a set of twins mixed in with the main herd.  I had to catch the mother once I figured out who it was.  She did not want to just follow the babies into the jug.  That put two sets of twins into the jugs.  It took me two hours to catch up on all the chores.  I used the last of the hay on the North end of the barn.  I had to mix up some more grain with our new worming earth.  Sweep out that hay area (Zeke caught and killed another mouse when I was moving the hay around) and toss straw into the horse and sheep area. 

This morning I went out and opened the baby chicken door so that they can start mixing with the other chickens.  When I went out to get eggs, all the babies were in their area and not mixing with the other chickens.  I did not find a single egg.  Every nest box was full of egg shells.  Something is eating the eggs!  So we are going to train the camera on the coop entrance to see if it is a cat.  We had just gotten eggs yesterday.  This is so not acceptable.  I cannot have something eating every egg.  So now it is just a matter of catching it!

The sheep had already put themselves away.  As I was making my way to the back of the barn I spotted a mother with her nose under the back barn door.  Another lamb had slipped under the door and could not get back up into the barn!  I hurried over, grabbed the wet lamb and moved it into one of the jugs.  The momma ewe followed me right into the jug.  I shut them in and fed and watered them.  She still looked kinda fat so she may have another baby overnight.  I had to shovel more straw into the barn and lodged a 2×4 under the door.  I pulled a pallet and some tongue and groove pieces to make a step up into the barn.  In the spring I am going to make some platform steps so it will be easy to get in and out of that end of the barn.  Annmarie and I are going to tag the babies in the mother pen on Saturday so we can let them join the main herd.  Once they are in the main herd then we will let everyone out of the jugs and chase them into the mother pen for another week of isolation from the herd.  If the wayward mother doesn’t keep track of her twins then we will have to bummer her babies.  This is going to mark momma as a cull animal come summer time.  I will take a picture of everyone on Saturday.  There are an amazing amount of babies.  This is the most we have ever had at one time.  They are so cute jumping around and playing.

I went out this morning to do the animal chores just as the sun was supposed to rise.  It is white, frozen and foggy and kinda light outside but not really.  I did put on my trusty hat brim flashlight just in case I needed it in the barn.  Zeke and I went out to check on the sheep and feed the sheep and horses.  I decided that both ewes in the jugs were capable of fending for themselves, plus I didn’t want to haul water (really that only affected the decision a little!).  I looked around the barn and didn’t see any new babies.  I checked all four corners, no babies.  So I used Zeke to push all the sheep out of the barn.  Then I used my fancy Y gate and shut the sheep out so that I could push the ewes and babies out into the nursery pasture in front of the barn.  I opened the jugs and finally got the ewes to come out.

  I was trying to get Zeke to gently push the sheep out the barn door but he got distracted.  He went over to one of the walls and found something in the shadows, a baby lamb!  He kept wanting to go lick it.  Since I had just chased the mother out of the barn I didn’t want him touching the lamb.  We chased the mommas out and then I swung the Y gate back and all the sheep came back into the barn.  I had forgotten to shut the door from the mother area to the main barn.  Next thing I know I have three babies and two mothers out with the main herd.

I managed to catch all three babies and put them in the nursery area.  The momma ewes went in after them.  This distraction allowed the newborn and her mother to find each other.  I caught the newborn and placed it in a jug, the ewe just followed her right in.  I went and got fresh water for her in the jug.  There are now 6 ewes and 9 babies running around the nursery pasture, with the new one in a jug still.  Lots of sheep still ready to have babies.  I suspect most will deliver in the next three weeks.  I never would have seen the new baby without Zeke.  I usually make him stay out of the barn when I am moving the sheep around but I want him to have better control and listen to commands better so I have been bringing him into the barn so we can get some animal moving contact.  He was a good boy and did exactly what he is bred to do.  Pretty amazing, we have such an easier time with the animals now that he is old enough to work.  We will always have a working dog as long as we have animals.  It is truly a necessity. 

Annmarie and I went out yesterday morning and tagged babies.  There are getting to be quite a few and since we are putting them all together it was hard to keep track of everyone.  We pushed the adults out of the barn then put all the babies and mommas into the barn.  Zeke did a good job handling the new mothers.  When the sheep are in a herd they don’t run out and try to stomp on Zeke.  They just all clump together and all the mothers look outward and stomp their feet at him.  The two of us (dog and I) managed to get six mommas and nine babies through the door with very little fuss.  There was some swearing on my part as Zeke did not want to go left.  He always wants to circle right, but the door was on the right side.  We got it and then Annmarie snagged the babies while I tagged them and wrote down the numbers.  We had to leave the wild ewe out of a jug.  We did isolate her with the other mommas so she is not running with the main herd.  Baby is doing fine. 

This morning I had to go out and wrangle the cows back into the front field.  They had pushed down a panel to get out into the CRP.  Annmarie saw them as she was leaving for work.  I took Zeke and we got them in, but there was a lot of course vernacular used over the entire time frame.  Damn dog loves voles and kept getting distracted!  He is a little leary of the cows any ways and the distraction was just too much.   Once the cows were out and I wired the gate shut I had him herd the cows a little bit so he could see what I wanted.  He wanted to chase cats instead of herd cows.  The only animal he truly loves to chase more that cats and voles is the sheep.  Unfortunately for him, I want him to chase cows also.  So we will have to spend a little more time moving the cows around for practice.  It helps the cows learn also.  It still only took me walking time from one end of the pasture to the other with Zeke. No backtracking or running around or lots of people to herd the cows.  So he is effective he just doesn’t like it as much as the sheep.  With the sheep he doesn’t get as distracted.