#stewartcreeksomethings – Page 45 – Stewart Creek Somethings

Lambing update fifth week

February 26, 2023February 26, 2023Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well our annual second winter came this week. We got about eight inches of snow and the temperature dropped into the single digits. The cows were happy I took them another big bale of hay. I fed out two more big bales this morning and only have five big bales left. I have half the barn and the machine shed full of 40# round bales that can be fed out! Once I get all the big bales fed I can let the cows into that four acre area. No animal has been in there to graze since last fall so with a little warm weather that area will perk up quite nicely and allow for some decent grazing.

This weekend some time had to be devoted to the sheep again. We have to get the ewes and babies in the jugs tagged and banded so we can make room for more babies. Currently we only have two jugs open. I think I can tag and band the single under the stairs and the other single. Both of those babies are healthy and moving around well. It gets a lot harder to find mom when there are 25 other screaming little lambs running around.

Yesterday morning I had three different sets of babies in the barn. I was able to let everyone out but those thee ewes and their babies. One of the ewes was crazy! I know this because after 20 minutes I had still not managed to trap her in a jug. I also noticed she had a notch out of the no ear tag ear. I have a notcher for marking the bad ewes. I almost never use it as I don’t like it, but this ewe is getting another notch and we need to cull her. I ended up trapping her in the chute then opening up the barn side of the chute and chasing her into the jug under the stairs. This worked surprisingly well. It did require moving stuff around but in the long run it would have saved me time. I had a set of twins and a single in with the two ewes. When I separated the ewes I must have messed up. I went out there this am and the dark black ewe was head butting both of the pure white babies I had in the pen with her. So I swapped babies and will need to go out later and see how the babies are doing. When I swapped them out the mothers went right up and were sniffing the babies. Yesterday the ewes were eating and they let the babies nurse. So I could not tell who belonged to whom.

Date of update- Feb 26, 2023
# of Lambs born – 41
# of ewes who have delivered babies – 25
# of ewes still pregnant – 16-18 in area, I don’t think they are all pregnant
# of single lamb births – 10
# of twin lamb births – 14
# of triplet lamb births – 1
# tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-13
# tagged female lambs-13
# of bummer lambs – 2
# of lambs who died in first two weeks – 2
Total # of lambs on farm -37
% birthing rate- 164%
% production rate -148%
% survival rate at birth – 100%
% survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 90%

The ram and his cronies got out of Alcatraz this week. I am pretty sure they got out through the lamb shed. I did not reinstall the gate in front of the barn after it got knocked off last summer. Not only do I need to reinstall the gate but I need to mount a cattle panel onto it so the sheep cannot pass through the bars. I managed to lure them back with grain and used the horseshoe door anchor in addition to the clip.

Office finish work closing in on done

February 20, 2023February 20, 2023Steve HardinLeave a comment

This is the part of the project that I don’t really enjoy, I don’t really care for the finish work. I realize that the product needs to get finished to look great but I still think it takes too long. Mr Professional came out on Saturday and Sunday and we worked on the office. Both windows got the router treatment courtesy of a new portable DeWalt router. Mr Professional got the casing and trim installed after a couple more tubes of caulk were applied. We are really attempting to seal the room up so that there are no bugs! The sound is already pretty blunted. It is amazing how quite the room is when you are inside with the doors shut. I spent most of Saturday working on getting the backlit inset frame sealed up and the trim installed so that it would hold the stained glass window we got from a thrift store. I used hinges and parts left over from various projects.

We got the router shelf installed. The fiber optic company came out during the week and installed new cable to the office. I ordered new cables for inside the house that will keep the cable near the wall. We will get the finish trim for that corner installed after the new cable arrives.

I spent Sunday cleaning the office floor as the front door blew open and the muddy puppy went into the room and enjoyed her self immensely. There was quite a bit of mud to get up off of the floor and couch. I do need to get two more door bumper plates to use as a shim.

We have the double barn door hardware installed on the wall. It still needs to be tightened up but it is in place. This did not go as smoothly as I had hoped. We only had to redrill one hole. Our mistake was covered up by one of the pieces.

Annmarie’s new desk was assembled along with her new chair. I spent most of Sunday wiping Tried and True on the molding and then wiping it off. It is just not a fast process. We got the two tables leveled and ready for the laser cutter and 3D plastic extruder printer. The real gem was getting the inset stained glass window completed. I am now really happy that I took the time to build this into the wall, no matter how much extra time it cost me.

The big things left are to finish the insulation install in the attic, to seal up the door going into the next room, installing the laser ventilation fan and to get the barn doors made and installed. I also need to pour epoxy into two cracks in the floor to fill them up. I am hoping I can get it all done in three more days!

Lambing update

February 20, 2023Steve HardinLeave a comment

This weekend some time had to be devoted to the sheep. The ewes have finally started to have lambs on a regular basis. We had ordered four more portable panels and they came. They come in two feet sections and have to be assembled. I put them all together on Friday. I had to go into town and get more grain for the ewes and mothers. We have been feeding them up for the last month. They had started to get skinny. So when I went out Saturday morning to check on the sheep I rearranged panels and built a couple more jugs. The jugs needed fresh bedding and feed buckets and water buckets filled. The mother/lamb area needed to be expanded also, by the time I was done two hours had passed.

Date of update- Feb 20, 2023
# of Lambs born – 35
# of ewes who have delivered babies – 21
# of ewes still pregnant – 23 in area, I don’t think they are all pregnant
# of single lamb births – 8
# of twin lamb births – 12
# of triplet lamb births – 1
# tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-11
# tagged female lambs-9
# of bummer lambs – 2
# of lambs who died in first two weeks – 1
Total # of lambs on farm -32
% birthing rate- 166%
% production rate -152%
% survival rate at birth – 100%
% survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 91%

We have a single lamb from one mother who makes the weirdest noise, it sounds like a cat! I tagged and banded him today and when I picked him up his rib cage is narrow and big. It is not the correct shape. We will be watching boy # 347 to see if he survives. The sheep are now at the annoying stage, they are super friendly and know that you are bringing good treats and they just want to be the first one to get them. We try and usher them gently out of the barn but after five minutes of trying to be gentle and quite we end up hollering at them to get out of the barn and chasing them out. There is only so much patience one can have before you realize that it is getting you nowhere and there are other things that need to be done.

Our spring is running a little muddy so I drove up the pastures to look and see how our pseudo soft spot was doing in field #2. It is pretty boggy and soft, I had to get out of the soft mud so I did not sink the tractor and there is running and standing water. There is one corner of the field that I had not marked out that is really soft. I need to mark it as off limits so in the spring when I need to cut hay I avoid that area.

Lamb day

February 3, 2023February 5, 2023Steve HardinLeave a comment

The sheep have taken up more of my staycation than I anticipated. I spent a whole day on Friday messing around with them. Due to all of the babies and only having one Jug left open It was determined I should tag and band babies. I usually just turn the babies loose and in a month try and match and catch random babies. It tends to be inaccurate and fairly labor intensive. Annmarie has been trying to get me to tag and band from the jugs for ages. The real problem is banding the lambs at that age is not easy. I have tagged and banded over 330 male lambs so I am pretty confident in getting it right now no matter the age. Plus it has the added benefit of actually being able to track each ewe accurately. Meathead helped me tag band and give selenium supplement to everyone in the jugs except the newborn twins under the stairs. We then put fresh straw in all of the used jugs and moved panels around to make the momma/baby area bigger and created a chute for the pregnant mommas to get into the barn. As the momma/baby group gets bigger we just keep giving them more of the front of the barn and the preggers get the smaller back half. It took us few years to figure this out! Nothing is ever easy when you start, there are a lot of hard lessons to getting a good routine down. The feeders get moved around also to correspond to the number of mouths needing fed.

Date of update- Feb 3, 2023
# of Lambs born – 15
# of ewes who have delivered babies – 8
# of ewes still pregnant – lots
# of single lamb births – 2
# of twin lamb births – 5
# of triplet lamb births – 1
# tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-6
# tagged female lambs-4
# of bummer lambs – 1
# of lambs who died in first two weeks – 1
Total # of lambs on farm -13
% birthing rate- 188%
% production rate -163%
% survival rate at birth – 100%
% survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 87%

Staycation is paying off

February 2, 2023Steve HardinLeave a comment

It’s been a busy two days. I went out to the barn yesterday hoping for babies and found none. So I kicked everyone out, filled the hay feeders and then grained everyone. I went and opened the barn door to let the sheep in so I could go fill the triplet’s water and spotted a brand new lamb, still covered in goo out in the barn lot. I literally had only taken 15 minutes to get everything in place. Now I had no clue who had given birth and they had all bum rushed the door as they wanted to be the first one to eat grain, even the new mother. I walked up and down the feeders looking for the ewe that had just given birth. I found her but she was low woman on the totem pole and had not managed to secure a spot on the wall feeder. We walked back and forth along the feeder until I was finally able to catch her and lock her in a Jug. As soon as I had the Jug gate secured she hit the gate with her head at a dead run trying to get out. I went out, scooped up the newborn lamb, I had leather gloves on and they got all gooped up, I then wiped the lamb down with some old hay netting and put her in with her mother. Mom was not interested in the lamb, only in eating. I left the lamb and asked Sarah to check in on them in 90 minutes so I could get started on applying polyurethane sealant to the new office floor. I can use two coats and the best part is if I apply the coats between 4-12 hours after the previous coat I do not have to sand the floor between coats, this was a huge selling point for me. It took me almost three hours to get the first coat on the floor. I went out after dinner and applied the second coat. I was back inside by 2100. The floor looked pretty shiny, but the floor was still wet.

On a side note, I was at the door doing the last one foot of floor, since I was at the door I had the polyurethane can directly in front of me, instead of the side like normal. I also had a cheap work shirt with a short breast pocket only. I had dirtied my two shirts already this week with the zip close breast pockets. Of course my phone was in my breast pocket and yes it slipped out of my pocket and dropped into the polyurethane! It was totally immersed, I fished it out and dried it off as best I could. I then finished the floor and then went inside the house, took the phone out of the case and buffed off the polyurethane until it was gone. My case had a cover over the charging port but the women tell me that the speakers are no longer as good as they were. I usually Bluetooth it to an external speaker anyways. My hearing is not great and I need the bigger louder speakers. The phone case had to go in the trash. I am now using Annmarie’s phone case and need to buy a new one. I am “not to be trusted” without a case. I drop my phone several times a week in the course of just using it.

This morning the plan was to get outside, do the chores real quick and then start on the walls. The Juniper on the ceilings is not going to get sealed, it will remain untouched. The floor was dry enough to walk on. That polyurethane really did dry quick. I was pretty impressed. I am definitely not a professional applicator, as I could spot the imperfections in the finish but most people are not going to notice.

The sheep had other ideas. I found two more ewes that had given birth and the single from yesterday had turned into a set of twins and the crazy mother was now paying attention to both of them. I got the ewe with a single and the other with twins into new Jugs and proceeded to then feed everyone grain and hay, then let them back in and get water a couple of times for all the Jugged mothers. Once that was done it was time to go to the old house. I got interrupted earlier at breakfast to get a loveseat delivered for my mother-in-law. The nephews will come out on the weekend and help me move the old one out of her house and into the new office and then take the new one to her house. One more reason for me to get this thing done! Sarah came out and we started to rub the “Tried and True” onto the walls, it gets applied with a lint free cloth liberally then wiped off in 60 minutes. It took us almost six hours to get all the walls rubbed on then off. Tomorrow I will work on the trim.