Author: Steve Hardin

Weekend, all better, maybe

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I did have to do a few things this weekend. On Friday I went out and cleaned up the baby chick area in the chicken coop. I have a separated 4’x4’ section that is in my main coop that I use for babies until they are fully feathered about three months old. This lets the adult chickens get used to them and it means I don’t need another building for the babies. The chicks were too big to stay inside anymore. I got the new bedding in, big hanging feeder and hanging nipple waterer all set then put the 12 chicks into their next two month home. I had to use a heat lamp and this time I zip tied it into place in two separate locations so the chicks cannot knock it off its holder. No more fires allowed in the coop. We have another 25 chicks coming in the next month. So by this fall we will have a very nice egg production rate.

Annmarie ordered a Bluetooth controlled single outlet. You plug it into a preexisting outlet then you can program or control on/off with your cellphone. It was only $15 and she uses it now for her laser exhaust fan. So she can leave a job printing in the office and then just program or manually turn off the fan from the house instead of having to walk back out to the office. My chicken light controller burnt out a couple of months ago and I am going to go with this same item for the coop! It’s a great idea and it remembers your last program even if Wi-Fi access goes away.

I fed the last two large bales of alfalfa, one to the sheep and one to the cows. The cows really are not interested as there is plenty of fresh new grass. The sheep have eaten all of the grass in the barn lot so they liked it better. I even locked the cows up into field 4A & 4B and the alleyway only. This will let the upper fields grow so that they can be turned into hay. I spent the rest of the day resting.

Saturday Annmarie worked on the garden. I cut 4×4’ cow panel wire sections for her to use in the garden as trellis. We had to order in garlic and I ordered two Carolina Allspice bushes. Those are now out in the berry area, we will see if we can keep them from dying in the winters. We are going to plant garlic and potato in laundry baskets. She managed to get the carrot seeds planted. I went out and worked on wiring the horse trailer. I worked on the trailer for three hours. It was too much. I spent all of Sunday doing nothing and had to take a nap. So I will be pacing myself better for the next couple of weeks. I think I can get the horse trailer done in another three hours. It needs to be functional to take the cows to Lagrande on May 4.

The honey bees are finding lots of pollen! In the picture you can see the pollen stores on their legs. We got a second hive, I still need to assemble it and I have found a third for sale and we are contemplating getting it. We are going to move the hives out into the orchard but I need to make some concrete block risers to keep the weeds away from the hives. I am hoping we get a lot more honey this year.

Resting sorta

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Well things did not go as planned after my concussion last week. I ended up getting a head CT and going to the concussion clinic. They put me on some turmeric and fish oil supplements and I am to rest and relax. I am allowed to do what I can but not to over do anything that makes my head symptoms worse. Plus, I am off work for a week. This is not going to help my head next week when I have to catch up but right now I have a nonstop headache. On top of all of that I have to listen to a lot of awkward jokes about leading with my head, how did you do that and you need a hard hat all of the time. I did capitulate after a few days on the hard hat idea. I really don’t like this laying around and since I wear a hat all the time when I am outside anyways it didn’t seem like a stretch to just wear a hard hat all the time when I am outside on the farm. So I have a OSHA approved vented carbon fiber hard hat on its way to the farm. I will be getting rid of all of my hats in the laundry room so that there will only be one choice when I head outside, the hard hat! I normally hit my head several times a year hard enough to give me wounds on top of my head so I am looking forward to not having those anymore either. Plus, I don’t get headaches and I particularly don’t have the patience or tolerance for them. Muscle aches, yeah I am used to that but not the headaches.

Mr Rainman is back in the area and has agreed to help me out this summer. I won’t be doing half the amount of hay I did last year and my only big project is the back bridge. We are going on a vacation to Scotland soon so that has limited the projects that will occur this summer. We have the grain bin outdoor cafeteria building still to put put but I am having reservations about putting it in the front yard as it will block the view of the barn. It’s not a priority but my brain is spinning on how to do it so I made Annmarie talk me through it’s location again. We decided on the front corner of the hillside by the corral. The grass never grows there anyways. It only needs to be leveled by about 18” so it should not be too bad of an area to prep. The only concession I will need to make is a set of gates on it to prevent the cows and sheep from going into it when we are running them through the yard.

Mr Rainman and I walked the entire property to see how things were going. We spotted our first calf of the year! It is one of the new black ones we just purchased a few months ago. Every one else should start having their babies soon as we planned for May births. So next week we will be sorting cows as I need to take five to Lagrande to the butcher. We are going to create two new herds, new mommas and expectant mommas and everyone else. I will move the new bull into Alcatraz as soon as I take our old bull to the sale. He needs to not go into the herd until the end of July. So we can then have calves nine months later in the spring.

The upper seven acre field was covered with late grass last year and I never mowed it or did the second hay cutting. It looks like only about half the field came back. This just means that I hay what is there and in the fall we plant the rest of the field in true orchard grass. It maintains it’s protein status better than most grasses throughout its later life cycle so I don’t have to be as picky as to when it is converted into hay. The other upper fields looked good but the cows are eating on all of them but upper seven acres (it needs new fencing around it to make it animal safe). We outlined a plan for spraying all of the fields and he started cleaning up the corral, old rotten hay bales to the burn pile. The Kubota got cleaned and greased. A few hours later Annmarie texts me our bull is in with the neighbors cows. It is not our old bull as he is now in Alcatraz for this exact reason. So we went down and spent 45 minutes chasing the two bulls back into our pasture. They had to fight for 20 minutes at the neighbors before we could get them to go back through the culvert. Once back through we had to fix the crossing again. We ended up patching a couple of fence spots, reinstalling the gate down by the schoolhouse and driving back to the house via the upper hillside. The irrigation ditch was flowing outside its channel making a mess through the lower field. I thought we could dig the blocked spot and get it back into the channel. We ended up digging about a 75’ section with the tractor to get it contained. The upper hillside section I planted in the fall is not growing the grass I wanted. It is a lot smoother, it is not growing sage and the grass that normally grows on the hillside is coming in nicely. I then laid around for four days doing nothing and sleeping a lot.

Spring really is coming

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We have finally given up on the sheep having any more babies. So we tossed the last five ewes in with the rest of the main herd. It is a lot easier tracking one herd than two. There is a third (now second) herd down below. They are the eating ones of which we already have nine sold. We know spring is here as I have commenced the inaugural lawn mowing of our front yard with the sheep. It takes 2-3 days for the sheep to tear the lawn down. They like the shortest grass so clumps of tall grass tend to standout. I had just tossed out a pound of clover seed on the hillside before letting the sheep out to graze. They will push the seed down into the ground. The clover also does great with trying to stay alive after getting eaten so it will spring back twice as thick as it was before the sheep grazed on it. We are finally starting to get some clover all over the hillside now. Due to the clover we have now given up chemical weed control on the hillside. All thistles and stinging nettle are removed with a shovel. I spent a couple of hours this weekend digging weeds.

Since the bees have survived the winter I dug up a couple of patches of dirt and planted flowers on the hillside. I will need to add a small fence around them to keep the dogs out but we should have blooming flowers in 45 days. We are going to use our circle planters in the back yard to plant marigolds in and around our garden. We are hoping the marigolds will help with insect control. We are trying to get more flowers growing for the honey bees. I have a couple of other spots I want to toss out some flower seed on.

Saturday, Meathead and I worked on getting the five new half wine barrels ready for herbs. I drilled holes in the sides so that water could drain and then she filled each barrel with five gallons of gravel to cover the bottom. I would like to say she carried a full bucket of gravel but that is not really realistic. She carried it in two half filled buckets. We had a long discussion about me using the tractor to scoop it up and drive it around but by the time we go through all of the gates and still carry it the final way in a five gallon bucket we have not saved any time so she got to carry gravel in buckets. It takes four buckets of soil to fill the barrel the rest of the way. We have a big tote with gardening soil in it that we are using to fill them.

I took chance out with me to put the sheep in and she did great! The picture of her above is in the lamb shed when we were feeding the ram and bull. She kept them from coming into the shed when I opened the door to feed. She did so well after everyone was put away I let her off the 30’ lead. Huge mistake, she took off running and would not listen to me. I may have gotten upset and hollered repeatedly which caused her to look at me, come within six feet and stay out of reach. I finally calmed down, bent down on one knee and called her, she came running and got hugs and licks in. She is too smart for her own good. It turns out that Annmarie had tried to use Chance to get the sheep out of the yard earlier in the day but only had her on a a six foot leash. The puppy did well enough that Annmarie let her go and then Chance dove for a lamb and would not let it up. This incurred the wrath of Mom which may explain why she was so good working the animals with me later in the evening. Once I got her back onto the lead I used the alpaca as training fodder. This works for the dog and me and the alpaca don’t really care for the dogs so it gives Chance a shot at moving a difficult animal. She did really good.

Our second bee hive arrived, I just need to assemble it. We are going to keep them in the lavender patch. I was out working today and had 4-5 honeybees land on me. I am unsure what they were looking for and as long as you just ignore them and don’t accidentally squish them they are harmless. It takes a while to get used to ignoring them.

2022 farm finances / 2022 chicken financials

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INCOME: $6380

Sheep sold 25 lambs for $2000

Eggs sold $600

Cows sold 6 cows (2/3 of profit) $3780

EXPENSES: $18,440

Truck = $850 for repairs

Chemicals = $0

Conservation = $0

Custom Hire = $0

Depreciation = $0

Feed = $7469= cows $7250 alfalfa is way up! This is our single biggest expense. This year we are going to try and hold over on some grass and cut down on the grass harvested. I did not do very well with tracking the dog, chicken and sheep feed last year. I could not find very many receipts. Chicken food is now $18.50 for 50#. At the beginning of the year we were only paying $16.50 its an 11% increase.

Fertilizer = $0

Freight/trucking = $0

Gasoline/Oil/Fuel = $1096, tractor fuel cost $1062 using 205 gallons, I now have an 100 gallon tank that I filled twice last year. This is almost triple what I was paying.

Interest on Loan Equip = $0

Insurance = $1947

Rent/Lease vehicles machinery/equip = $0

Repairs & Maintenance = $5420, Tractor $1766, sprayer $400, truck $1574, side by side $ 153, water pump $1400

Seeds/plants = $348, we bought some triticale seed and planted it this last fall.

Supplies = $3992, gloves over $250, 10 yds gravel $250

Taxes = $1181

Utilities = $0

Vet/Breeding/Medicine = $1298, we got a new Border Collie puppy. She got sick once and had to be spayed. So for everyone that keeps telling me to get a guardian dog they really need to look at the vet and food bill plus the purchase price on the dog and calculate out their losses to see if its really worth it.

Purchased Animals = $1125, we had to get a new bull after 12 years! It’s time to get some new genes on the farm.

Total for 2020 was a loss of $12000. We did better on keeping some of our costs down last year. This year we are going to focus on selling our leftover hay from the barn and machine shed. We are going to put up less hay, only fill the barn. We are going to spray the weeds 3-4 times this year, I have some old fertilizer I got off the neighbor and we are going to try it for the first time. We have one more length of fence to install alongside the creek so we can give the animals another 7 acres to browse on. In the fall we will work on replanting another half of the bottom down by the school house. We keep trying to improve the forage available for the animals to eat. Having the ram get off cycle really hurt us on lamb production.

 EGG Production

Well, the chickens lost money this last year. The predators killed me and the wife says I need to focus on predators this year so they don’t kill half the flock. I want to raise the prices again, we currently charge $5/dozen but she tells me we need to double down on timely egg collection and some serious predator control this year before we can decide to increase the prices. The price of feed has not gone up since we raised the prices last year so I am going to keep them the same for now.

We averaged 21.8 laying hens for the year and currently only have 13 hens. We collected on average 6.3 eggs/day for a lousy production rate of 27%! I am sure this is my worst production rate ever. Our monthly feed weight was 154#/month at a cost of $54.25/month. The crazy part is our feed cost was 28 cents/egg or $5.62/dozen. Our total cost for the year was $6.18/dozen eggs. We sold them for $5/dozen. We ended up losing $100 on the chickens last year. Now mind you, every time the weather goes crazy or a raccoon showed up the chickens refused to lay eggs. This happened quite a bit throughout the year. We have 12 new chicks and will work to try and get another 12 to get our numbers up for this year but those chicks won’t lay for 6 months.

Lamb update

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This weekend some time had to be devoted to the sheep as always when we have lambs. I used to think it was special to spend a few hours in the barn but with the lambs and constantly changing situation I have just realized that I will be out in the barn for a few hours. I have been trying to clean up the old house porch which means burning scrap wood. I had a gallon of beeswax finish that was done and was holding saturated rags. I tossed it on the burn pile to get it cleaned out before tossing it in the trash. Unfortunately, I left the gallon paint can out in the pasture and one curious lamb got it stuck on its head! The dummy could not get it off of his head. This was noticed and said offending bucket was removed from said idiot’s head. The bucket went into the trash can and the lamb went off on its way as if this was a normal part of life.

I pulled down three jugs. We only have three set up now and there are no sheep in any of them. Not having to haul water is amazing! We are so glad we only have to do it when the ewes are in jugs and otherwise they can get their own water.

I have started to toss out four bales outside the barn so the sheep can pull the bales apart and eat what they want. I also gave in and opened up the barn lot to the mommas and babies. So they have another 1 acre area to roam around on and to eat the grass. I had been keeping them off of it so the grass would grow. It had grass several inches tall on it. If we would ever warm up the area would shoot up with fresh grass. The weather keeps driving the sheep back into the barn. They don’t mind a little rain or sleet but they don’t like a downpour or pea sized hail.

The sheep all have their own personalities but some tend to stand out amongst the others. This little lamb is easy to spot in the barn. It wants to run off and do everything by itself. It is super curious and will come right over to you looking for a treat. It also gets lost and distracted easily. When everyone runs off to the green pasture it stays behind and hollers because it is alone. This morning I had to chase it out of the barn area and out into the pasture as it could not seem to grasp the concept of leaving the barn to find their friends.

The back creek is running from the melting snow but since the mountains keep adding snow we have not had a noticeable rise in the runoff. I took the tractor and drove through the creek to go to the wood shed and get bee supplies and drip irrigation supplies for Annmarie. They now go in her little garden supply shed by the garden. She is eager to get out in the garden but it keeps freezing at night. I scraped the car windows last week. Maybe by mid April she can start getting plants in the ground. She has started herb seeds inside the house this weekend. I got a heat mat for starting cut propagation attempts on my house plants, so the seed starts are taking up most of the mat now. My African Violet starts are starting to take off and I may be able to get 12 more plants. I am shooting for 25 plants in the next couple of months. I have about 10 Jade plant starts going right now and have managed not to kill any yet.

  • Date of update- April 2, 2023. We think there may be 4-6 ewes left per Annmarie, I think there are only two left but I would not bet more than $10 on my opinion, Annmarie is usually correct!
  • # of Lambs born – 54
  • # of ewes who have delivered babies – 33
  • # of ewes still pregnant – 8 in area, I don’t think they are all pregnant
  • # of single lamb births – 13
  • # of twin lamb births – 19
  • # of triplet lamb births – 1
  • # of bummer lambs – 5
  • # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 3
  • Total # of lambs on farm -46
  • % birthing rate- 164%
  • % production rate -139%
  • % survival rate at birth – 100%
  • % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 85%