One day after it rained.  Luckily it didn’t rain this day.

The sheep cannot get out of the ram pasture and barn lot now and are not real happy with this arrangement.  Even though, the area, they are trapped in has grass almost 10 inches high every where.  The grass truly is greener on the other side in their minds.  It is still raining all the time here so I have been having a hard time finding a couple of dry days to mow the lawn.  I managed to squeeze it in today, but it took an extra hour due to all the moisture in the grass.

Barn egg stash, these got recycled no telling how old they were.

Annmarie found an egg stash again in the old barn, one of the green egg layers was hiding in a corner under a bunch of tumble weeds and laying eggs.  I found 13 green eggs and a couple of random brown eggs three feet away.  I took all the tumble weeds back outside and piled some stuff in the nest, plus when I caught her on the nest I chased her out of the barn.  Hopefully, she will go back to laying in the chicken coop.  If not then I will have to lock the chickens in the chicken yard for a couple of days to help her forget about her barn nest.

We got our cattle guard welded back together.  It was very fast!  I just went and talked to the welder last week.  Luckily, he had another job out near here yesterday so he stopped by and fixed us up also.  It looked like the snow plow caught the support and sheared it off.  Now I have to put some new support boards up.  While I was talking to the repairman he mentioned that he heard we had sheep.  I said there will be two lambs for sale this Fall and he is welcome to come choose one.  He said he would come out!!  Very nice and I have one other person at work very interested.  The repairman owns a local metal fabricating shop that we drive by on our way home.  He has had several rolls of old sheep fencing there on occasion.  He informed me that he is the owner of the scrap metal yard now and he would sell me that wire for 25 cents/pound.  Far cheaper than I could buy new and it has lots of life left in it.  I told him I would take 1000 feet for starters.  That is going to save me a bunch of money on fencing!!

More clouds.  I liked them.

I also need to burn and spray some weeds.  I will try and burn as much as I can then spray what is left over.  I am starting to think about marking the posts and railroad tie holes for the new fence also.  I think I will do that this weekend!!  I am starting to get closer.

Sheep are starting to shed their Winter wool.  The little brown one in the center of the picture is all done and he looks like a goat!!  They thought we were going to give them a treat.  You can see our shadows in the bottom left of the picture.

The sheep are starting to look pretty ragged.  They are all shedding their Winter wool.  The goat look is coming around.

I came home Wednesday to find the sheep all over the farm.  They were in three different groups all separated by fences.  Annmarie had told me she would lock them up for me, so I knew they were not where they were supposed to be.  Instead of doing the things I had planned on my drive from work I went back to fencing.  I had three large holes, all on hillsides and near water.  So I spent the next three hours installing more fencing and tightening fencing that I had installed last year (for any future fencers out there, you need to wrap the wire around the pole a couple of times then wrap it back on the incoming wire and put ONE staple in that is it!!  No more.  I had to take out four staples on each one I had to re-tighten.  I was not taking into account the animal factor and their ability to loosen fence.)  Now mind you on the way home I stopped and got some really, really long rubber gloves.  One of the young ewes had miscarried and had some afterbirth hanging out and I thought I was going to have to go fishing.  I know, I am squeamish, but you really can get a few skin diseases from the sheep, hence the glove purchase.  Once Annmarie came home we caught the ewe in question and luckily for me, she had passed everything, no more hanging out stuff.  I will save the gloves as I am sure they will be needed at a later date.

I went outside to work on the rose bushes today.  The Winter was not kind to our roses.  All but one froze to the ground and one died.  the roses were so big I had to use the Sawzall to cut them down (that and I couldn’t find the loppers).  My large bush rose was almost four inches across at the base and it died to the ground.  I had a blooming tree in the corner of the yard that was sagging so I tried to prop it up today and it broke off at ground level.  It was dead and had rotted off, surprising since it was alive in the Fall.  I also cut down about 200 thistles out of our yard.  They are coming back with a vengeance this year.

Again, I could not find the sheep in the pasture so I figured I had another hole!!  So I spent another three hours fencing.  This time I worked on the gates (place panels to the gates so the sheep cannot jump between the bars) and added a panel gate to the exit of the loading chute.  I found one more spot on the main fence line and I nailed in a 2×8 to cover that section and used wire staples to attach the sheep wire to the 2×8.  I still have not seen the sheep.  I pulled a pine tree over to the burn pile with the pickup (forty foot tree) and spotted the sheep out in the CRP (of course since they are not supposed to be there).  If you were a sheep would you leave all that tall green grass to go out into the scraggly tall brown grass?  I wouldn’t, but apparently I would not make a good sheep.  So I herded the sheep back in to the main area of the farm and tightened the machine access gate, an old wire and pole gate.  I had to add a couple of fence posts to hold up the panel on the other side of the gate.  This is were I learned the value of twisting the barb wire and not putting in four staples.  I just had to unwrap the wire from itself once I used the fence tightener and just wrapped it back on itself.  NO staples at all.  This makes this very easy to do.

I am fairly certain that at this point the sheep, cannot in any way, get out of the ram pasture.  I do realize that this is a bold statement, but my arms are killing me and I am almost certain that the sheep cannot get out now. We will know in a few days.

I did manage to finish up the wood shed door today.  I dug around in the machine shop and came up with a iron ring, some old chain and an old bolt with square nuts.  I used an old hinge from a door as a slide locking mechanism.  It turned out nice.

Completed wood shed door.  Yes, the concrete walls have moved in the last 80 years and the opening is not square.

I had to switch the water container for the chickies again today.   I keep having to get bigger and bigger as the chicks grow.  I have a five gallon water bucket outside but the chicks just do not want to go outside.  I figure eventually they will get it figured out and start using the grounds outside.  This is probably the friendliest batch of chicks we have ever had.  Not sure why that is true.

Five week old chickens.

Of course it did rain again today.  We had frost on the ground on Sunday morning.  The weather is just not cooperating with our attempts to get a garden going (we do this at Annmarie’s grandmother’s house, she is too old to do all the hard manual labor so I do that and she keeps the daily stuff going.)

 I really had plans to work on the wood shed at some later date.  It needs a couple of windows, a front door and  a dormer window installed plus some new siding on the South side.  This is hands down a do last kinda project.  Unfortunately, we purchased a new mower on Saturday.  My normal storage spot (anywhere outside in the weather) will not do for the new machine.  I attempted to get into the wood shed with the mower but you must turn 90 degrees once inside and the mower is too long.

If you look closely into the dark hole you will see the wall that was obstructing my mower.  I added a couple of new 2x4s to stiffen the top and ripped out the wall.

So I spent most of today ripping out the boards that were obstructing our straight in entrance.  Wanting to reuse the boards meant being careful while taking them down and removing all nails (which I put in a bucket so they can be disposed of in the metal recycle pile).  So I built another door.  I found some neat old wood when I was removing it off of the wall, someone had carved in their initials and a little house and various other marks.  I put the initials at eye level on the door so you would see it upon entering the wood shed.  I installed another wooden rail slide locking mechanism.  This one was much easier than the one I did on the outhouse.  I knew what I was doing this time.  I am still concerned that the door may shake in the wind and the vibration will open the slider. I think I am going to hang an old hinge behind the lock so gravity keeps it down and when you want to open the door you just lift one side of the hinge.  The only real problem with this is if someone locks you in it will not be possible to get out.

Almost completed door.  It is hung and the latch cutout is made so the door will stay shut.  I just need to install a stop on the non-hinge side, a door handle and the slide locking hinge.

I of course need to still cleanup.  I carried down a few too many 2x4s from the chicken house (wood storage area) (vs the chicken coop which is near the house).

We had one of the ewes we picked up in November give birth.  I only know this because I saw afterbirth hanging out of her this morning.  I went out but could not find the lamb and of course it frosted.  She is only about 10 months old.  Our other pair of young ewes miscarried their first lambs also.  We are not sure if it is a size thing or because they ate some pine needles and blue spruce needles.  It is a consequence of running the sheep with the ram all year around.  So Annmarie was right and I need to lock the sheep up every night, even if it is only in the barn lot.  This will make a whole lot less ground to cover if there are any baby questions.

I had to throw the baby chicks out into their grassy yard today.  They just did not want to leave the coop, but they are getting too big for that space and are starting to peck bald spots on each other.  At first they just hunkered down and did not move around, but after a couple of hours they started roaming the grass and having a good time.  Of course only two of them could figure out how to get back into the coop.  Which meant I had to catch each one and put them back in the coop for tonight.  It froze this morning, so I don’t want to leave them out yet.

Well it is officially May and I can do another chicken report.  I would like to say it is going to be good, but that is not going to happen.  I purchased the Chicken Butler (automatic door) last month and that threw me even more negative.  Since I have been negative for a while it is going to take me a while to dig out.  At this point I am hoping to be positive by July.  That gives me 2-3 months of good egg production before it drops off again.  Hopefully, I can get enough ahead to cover the feed until the end of the year.  On a plus note, I did not lose any customers by raising my prices.  I didn’t really have any choice in raising the prices, but no one likes to do it.  I have been watching the prices in the grocery store and depending upon where you shop $3/dozen for farm fresh, free range, no antibiotic, colored eggs is a great deal.  Walmart had them at $4/dozen and certified organic are pushing $5/dozen.  Feed prices jumped another 5% last month from the beginning of the month.  It is crazy how fast the price of feed is changing.  The screwy weather in the Midwest may make it even worse this year.  I would have to charge $5/dozen to make any money (other than expenses) and I am unwilling to do that.  I would have to start hitting all the local farmers markets and most likely get certified organic to make it work.  I see eggs on Craigslist going for $2.50-3.00/dozen, with an occasional $2/dozen.  I realize those people are probably not tracking their expenses and most likely do not realize how much they are actually spending on their chickens.  


April report:  I lost $115.16 for the month on an average 27 hens laying (Should not lose any more to predators with the automatic door!  Now if I only had a door for the sheep that would lock them in at night…).  My net income total is $177.47 for the year .  I had $50.21 in expenses for feed (200#) this month (the weather is improving and the chickens are actually getting food when they forage now).  For the year, my monthly expenses are $108.54 (an increase of $42.12/month). We collected a total of 414 usable eggs (110 more than last month) averaging 17.8 eggs/day collected (for the year the average is 13.5 eggs/day).  My productivity for the month was 66% (increased 29% from last month) (for the year it is 50%).  The chickens ate 0.38# food/egg (this is a drop of 118% from last month!!  Say hello to better weather and I included the feed for the baby chickies as a feed expense) (for the year are averaging 0.59# food/egg).   It cost $0.9/egg or $1.08/doz for feed (half of what it cost last month) (my yearly average is $0.13/egg or $1.56/dozen).  My monthly net income is a loss of $44.37/month this year.  I have hope if the chickens can keep up production that I may break even this year.  My babies will start producing in late Fall so that should help.  Unfortunately, the Brahmas sometimes take up to 9 months to start laying instead of the average 6 months for most breeds.  

I was taking pictures last night and happened to catch the sunset.  I took some pictures of the machine shop with the sun shining through the holes in the walls and then some more around one of our 100 year old trees.  I just could not decide which ones I liked best.

Machine shop with setting sun #1

Machine shop with setting sun #2

Machine shop with setting sun #3

Setting sun horizon #1

Setting sun horizon #2

Setting sun horizon #3