Farm

Fencing has reached the no stopping point!

Steve Hardin1 Comment

I am trying very hard to get this last fence finished before the weather stops us. Luckily, the weather just will not freeze. Friday, Mr Tex, Mr Rainman and Mr Professional all came out. We hit it hard and got the barn lot fence entirely rebuilt. We figured it had been ten years since I repaired it and it was in sad shape. The only reason the sheep had not been getting out of it and out into the wheat field to feast is that they are all pregnant, well fed and currently lazy. They will no longer be able to get out of the barn lot through the fence. We have a new gate installed in the barn lot out into the new alleyway. We also got the road gate hung going into the alley way. Mr Professional and I worked on getting T-posts pressed into the ground. This was not easy and the wind was blowing. I am deaf, he is deaf, the wind was blowing and the tractor was running. There was a lot of yelling and hand signals for hours on end.

Saturday, Mr Rainman and Mr Tex came out to continue fencing. The real problem is we have a wind advisory going all day for high winds. I dressed warmer on Saturday as the wind cut through my coat on Friday and I was cold most of the day. Mr Rainman and I continued to install T-posts while Mr Tex worked on getting the woven wire installed. The real problem Saturday was the constant strong wind, the wind was such that it blew all dust directly into my face. Luckily, I was wearing my new wraparound safety glasses so I was not getting dust in my eyes, just in my face. We spent five hours putting T-posts into the ground. I knew if we could get it done then there was no stopping the fence progress. All of the steps that require us to dig into the dirt would be completed. The rest can be done in freezing weather. At one point, Mr Rainman warned me that if I started to feel moisture falling on me it was from his snotty nose. This was not the most reassuring thought but it was true! The average wind speed for the day was 20 MPH with the highest gust at 55 MPH per our weather station. We quit early as soon as we had all the T-posts into the ground!

Sunday, I opted to start at 0800. It was raining when we started and in no time it started to snow, big wet heavy flakes. It was miserable on my hands, soaking wet leather gloves are no fun and eventually your hands get so cold that they get numb! Mr Rainman worked on getting clips installed on the woven wire that got put up yesterday and Mr Tex and I worked on installing the other H braces. We got three H braces completed and cut the cross pieces cut for the last two. The Kubota tractor almost slid off the road due to the mud and slant in the road, our hands felt like popsicles and we just decided by consensus that this was not going to happen. Christmas is just around the corner so between activities and holidays it will be January before we get at the fence again. I think three more solid days on the fence with three people to get it done. We got 3/10” of rain this morning.

No new baby lambs since mid week. It looks like the ram had to take another breather and rested up before he started working again.

Lambogeddon progresses

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We have five creches, jugs per wife, for newborns setup in the barn. One is larger than the others so we stuff multiple day old mommas and babies in it to free up the individual jugs. Twice this week I have had to go out after work and tag and band babies to release them into the momma/baby large pen. There was simply no room at the inn to keep them until the weekend. Now when there is only one momma and a set of twins in a single jug it is relatively simple to tag and band and send a text to Annmarie with momma number, number and gender of baby(s) and their tag numbers. This is infinitely more complex when you stuff four mommas and four sets of twins into one large jug and you want to assign the correct babies to the correct mothers. I had to just sit down on the barn floor in the bedding and watch the sheep to see who belonged to whom. The easiest way is to wait for them to nurse. The mommas don’t like milk stealers and will head butt any strays to keep them away. This worked for the first two pairs but the second pairs I finally had to catch babies and just hold onto them until they bleated then turn them loose in hopes that they would run to mom. It took about thirty minutes to get them all tagged and banded. I even managed to get more baby sheep poop all over my Carhart overalls. As soon as we are done lambing it will be time to wash the overalls. They are getting all kinds of interesting substances on them.

The babies are so curious that if you just sit down on the floor and stay quiet and they will come over and start sniffing you and playing around you. This is highly entertaining and very therapeutic. It is very hard to be sad or frustrated when baby lambs are leaping around you and coming over to sniff your boots and hands. I highly recommend this course of treatment. Especially when an entire section of the barn is nothing but lambs cavorting and running around like miniature mobs.

Lamb Statistics

  • 24 of 34 ewes have given birth, 71% completed
  • Lambs born alive 38 birth rate 158%
  • Stillborn lambs 1
  • Lambs rejected 0
  • Lambs died before 2 weeks 1
  • Lambs bummered not rejected 0
  • Flock productivity 154%
  • Singles 11 of 24, 46%
  • Twins 12 of 24, 50%
  • Triplets 1 of 24, 4%

Lambogedden extended

Steve Hardin1 Comment

It has been a long weekend. It is officially December now and I am still building fence on the property. The weather is amazing and scary. In all reality everything should be frozen and I should not be building any more fence for 2021. Since the weather is cooperating and we set a record high last week, I am going to continue to fence. Mr Tex & Mr Rainman came out on Friday and worked on H bracing the posts we already had in the ground. This was because it was below freezing and I wanted to give the ground some time to warm up before we started to attempt to drill more holes in the ground. I went to town to buy some more railroad ties, T posts, woven wire and two gates. I got the entire flat bed trailer loaded down with fencing materials. I made it home just after they finished the H braces and we unloaded the trailer. Mr Rainman and I finished the day by distributing all the fencing supplies along the length of the future fence. We calculated that at the current material prices it would cost about $10k/mile of fence. It has definitely gone up in price since prior to Covid.

The sheep are trying to have their babies. They are not being very fast at delivering. We only had five babies this week, four mommas delivered, one set of twins and the rest singles. Today made our production percentage jump as we had two sets of twins! I went out and rearranged the barn on Saturday with Mr Professional. We set up five pens on the far end of the barn and created a larger momma/baby area. I did mess up and leave the adjoining gate open and spent an extra thirty minutes sorting those sheep that had given birth from those that had not. I missed one last night and caught it this morning! Tip, shut all the gates all the time. We need to order three more long aluminum panels. This will let us form five pens with a pathway to the gate. The plan for next year is to just setup all five pens before lambing season and then they will be ready, including the one under the stairs this will give us six creche.

Lamb statistics

  • 17 of 34 ewes have given birth, 50% completed
  • Lambs born alive 27 birth rate 159%
  • Stillborn lambs 0
  • Lambs rejected 0
  • Lambs died before 2 weeks 0
  • Lambs bummered not rejected 0
  • Flock productivity 159%
  • Singles 8 of 17, 47%
  • Twins 8 of 17, 47%
  • Triplets 1 of 17, 6%

Mr Professional came out on Saturday, we did the barn rearrangement then went onto installing the gate automatic closer. This is for the gate leading into our yard from the cars. We read the instructions carefully and realized we needed to fabricate an extension piece. After digging around in the scrap metal file and then bending some metal, we attempted to install it in four different configurations with marginal success. The automatic closer kept stopping the gate from fully opening. Annmarie came home and suggested we install it on the door over by the trash can enclosure as the propane person always leaves it open. We did and it went right on without any difficulties. We gave up and went and installed the two metal gates on the front porch. They just need some type of stopper so the auto closer does not tweak the doors. We are working on finding something that will work then I can adjust the auto closer appropriately.

Mr Tex came out on Sunday and we focused on drilling holes in the ground. We now have all of the holes in the ground necessary to complete the fence! The only real problem is we still have six posts to set in gravel, which can be done after ground freezes, but we have NO T-posts installed yet. I need about 5-6 hours of thawed out ground to install the 110 T-posts necessary. Once the T-posts are installed then nothing can stop us, not even snow. We did have to move a fence that was under the power lines back away from the road about three feet at its narrowest point. It was just going to be too tight of a fit when hauling the trailer back and forth. The nice thing is there will be no culvert to cross so no worry about someone dumping the trailer off into the ditch. I do need to buy a new auger point and teeth for the post hole auger. It is getting pretty dull.

Lambogeddon finally looks like it is here

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Thanksgiving was very nice, a good friend of our came up to spend it with our family. This is always nice as I did not do any work on the farm other than feed and take care of babies while Doug was visiting. He left Saturday morning and I headed out to the barn to do chores right afterwards. There were four more ewes that had given birth! There were two sets of twins and two singles. I pushed everyone else out of the barn then proceeded to rearrange areas to take the new babies and mommas. I put both singles and their mothers in the same pen, I tag and banded the twins that were under the stairs and released them into the momma/baby area. I put a new set of twins under the stairs and I penned the last set of twins in the far back corner of the barn mostly because they were there already and it was easy to pen them there. I then had to feed and water everyone. At some point trying to get over the 2×4 we keep at the barn entrance, to keep the horse out of the barn, I ended up falling on my face. Luckily, the ground was dry and I was able to slow my fall. This would have been very messy earlier in the week when there was four inches of squishy mud and sheep poop. I will be moving the 2×4 over to the end gate on the side of the barn, I don’t know why I did not think of this sooner. I guess I just needed the proper motivation.

I had noticed that the spring was getting pretty muddy the previous day. It was a combination of silt buildup and sheep pushing dirt into the spring bed. So after taking care of the sheep I went and dug out a short section of the spring bed. I even built a new cinder block wall out of six blocks using sticks, mud and gravel, not my best work but I do expect it to last through the winter until it can be corrected in the summer. I went in and took a nap after that. I used the breaker bar too much last week helping with the fence and had to sleep 10-12 hours a night for three nights running to even feel good. My chest pain started to come back so I have vowed to take it easier and let my helpers do the metal breaker bar work and I need to let them do the heavy lifting. Even after 12 months of catching Covid, I am still taking high dose aspirin, only twice a day now, and get intermittent chest pain with increased physical activity. My hope is that by 18 months I will be back to normal, the only real problem is I will be 1.5 years older and out of shape!

Mr Rainman and Mr Tex came out this morning to work on fence. There was another set of twin lambs born last night. So all of the mommas/babys from yesterday all got shoved together in the far end of the barn and the new set of twins got put under the stairs.

Lamb statistics

  • 11 of 34 ewes have given birth, 32% completed
  • Lambs born alive 18, birth rate 164%
  • Stillborn lambs 0
  • Lambs rejected 0
  • Lambs died before 2 weeks 0
  • Lambs bummered not rejected 0
  • Flock productivity 164%
  • Singles 5 of 11, 45%
  • Twins 5 of 11, 45%
  • Triplets 1 of 11, 9%

My single biggest summer project is getting the rastra and new drive over culvert installed. After that is in then I can think about other items. We would like to get our septic tank pumped but currently no big truck can get to the house.

We worked on the fence some more, the barn lot is pretty beat up alongside the wheat field. The horse has been pushing on it and bending the T-posts. We are working on getting some wooden posts in the ground along that side of the fence but it is rock from about 12” down, very hard to dig a hole in. Luckily, with the moisture we have had we are having pretty good luck digging holes with the tractor auger, I only sheared 3 shear bolts today. We are working on the corridor fence that will allow us to run the animals from pasture to pasture without keeping all of the pastures open. We want to control the pasture rotation better next year. We think we can extend the usefulness of our pasture this way. We got 18 posts set today with 12 of those including digging the hole. We had to create one rock-jack as the posts were directly on top of a rock bluff. I think four more days should see us getting the fence completed. Its a race with the weather now. Although it was 66 degrees F today and we all wore short sleeves and blue jeans, except me, I wore a long sleeve shirt also but I do that when its 100 degrees F. The weather is very crazy.

Fence completed for 4a

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It was a long week last week and I kind of made it that way. Mr Rainman and Mr Tex came out last Sunday to help me finish up the fence in 4A. I ended up having Mr Rainman work on our yard, he finished trimming all of the lavender plants and trimmed out all of the old raspberry canes and tied up the new ones and trimmed them. He also tied up our thornless blackberries, he even managed to plant a few new plants that had self started by rooting the tips of runners. So hopefully by the end of next year we will have the entire row filled in with blackberry plants. This was work that was going to take a while and needed to be done.

Mr Tex went down to work on the fence in field 4A and Mr Rainman and I went to the barn to tag and band lambs and to rearrange the barn to hold more mommas & babys. I went down to help Mr Tex finish the fence and It turned out very nice. On our way back to the house we ended up fixing the fence in 4B all alongside Stewart Creek, which is currently dry. I had not tightened or repaired that fence in many years. It looks much better now and no animal should be able to get out, this is not a definitive won’t get out. I have learned over the years that if they want to get out they will. I snapped the high tension wire and had my hand down on the tightener when it happened, my poor right hand thumb took a beating and has been bothering me for over a week now, I am hopeful it will get well soon.

We had another set of twins born. We keep hoping that they will just hurry up and start having babies all at once. So far this has not happened. I will get the numbers together soon for our lambing season. So far it has been good other than incredibly protracted. On the way past the barn I noticed our fat orange barn cat laying up in the window area soaking up some heat rays from the sun. He is incredibly fat! I am unsure how many mice he eats but I have not found a single mouse in the hay yet so the barn cats get to stay and someone is doing their job.