barn

More hay movement

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Friday we went to an estate auction and got a few trinkets. One of the best things was an old fashioned counter/clicker! There were two of these and I should have bought them both instead of just one. I can now officially count hay bales and sheep easily. I used this to count the hay as I loaded it up into the barn. I can only throw the hay bales about eight feet high. I have to have help to stack them higher. One person throws them up and the other stacks them higher. I spent two days picking up hay bales and then unloading them into the barn until I had all 170 bales in the barn. I can only get about 30 bales into the back of the pickup. So it takes a few trips for me to get it all loaded and unloaded.

I ended up having to feed about nine bales to the boys in Alcatraz. The bales were too wet. I used to measure the moisture content in the bales but I can pretty much tell by picking them up whether there is too much moisture in the bale. The wet ones just get fed to the boys. They love the green grass and eat them before they spoil.

The next thing I need to do is to get some spray on the neighbor’s field. I need some on ours also so I can do them all at the same time. As fast as the grass is growing I will be getting a second cutting in 6-8 weeks and maybe will get a third cutting in this year. The grass is really growing. We are working on getting water out of our irrigation ditch and onto the field next to Donna’s. This will give us about 3 acres of irrigated land. We are going to pile on the water and try and get the cheatgrass to sprout so we can accelerate killing it. I would like to see it sprout three times this year.

Sunday I did not really want to move bales so I went down and cut on the broken apple branch that was blocking the gate. I cut on it until I had a path for the animals to get through. My hope was that if I opened up a path and locked it open the four alpaca would come into the area near the houses. Otherwise I am going to have to chase them in so they can be sheared. We are going to shear this upcoming weekend.

All three of our bee hives are still alive! We are having to feed them for a short time between flowers blooming. Pretty soon the blackberries will start to bloom and the bees will not need any supplement. But for now all three hives are getting some.

Hay needs a home

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I needed to get all the baled hay from the neighbor’s place moved into our barn. The real problem is I needed to move the hay from two years ago out of the way first. We have an overhead walkway in the animal area that I keep “straw” on for the barn floor. We have just started to use the oldest hay for the floor covering instead of buying straw. It works pretty good and keeps our costs down. The only hard part is getting the bales up onto the walkway! I cut a bigger hole from the walkway to the second storage room and just started grabbing bales from the top of the last two rows. As you can see the raccoons are having a fine time in the barn and have created another huge poop pile. They are so annoying. They make a mess of the barn. I will need to get up there in a couple of years, next time the hay room is empty and clean all of that poop off the stacked wood. What I should really do is just remove that wood and stack hay on top of that hallway. The raccoons don’t do that in the other hay room because I store hay on top of the walkway.

I only managed to smash my head twice on the roof beams. Luckily, I did not knock myself out. I only had a cloth tied over my bald head so I ended up with two big abrasions to the top of my head. It is too hot to wear my safety helmet. Honestly, I did not think it would be possible to hit my head while I was on top of the pile. I got the overhead walkway about 80% full and then moved all of the old hay in front of the doorway. It will be the first hay I will be able to pull for feeding. I may even just pull about 15 bales once I have the floor cleaned off so the sheep can spread it around and I don’t have to pull it from the overhead walkway!

There was a lot of sweating involved for this old man to get it all moved around. I still have a pile of netting that will need to be taken out of the barn and tossed into the trash. I gotta get all of this old hay moved around before I can bring any of the new hay from this year into the barn.

I do need to go around and fix my 12v overhead light system. The damn raccoons pulled some of the wires loose. I need to use those zip ties with screw heads so I can anchor the wires in place. This needs to happen this summer as it was very inconvenient not having lights in the hay rooms.

Lambing final tally

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This weekend some time had to be devoted to the sheep. It was time to worm everyone. We have to wait until the lambs are old enough to do it and no one else is going to give birth. So we ran them all into the barn and proceeded to run them out through the chute system. Mr Rainman did the snagging and holding while I used the oral drenching kit to just pump some wormer down into the back of their throat. This thing works so much better than drawing up syringes. We also knocked V shapes into the ewes we are going to cull after the lambs are weaned. We marked nine ewes for culling. When we go to pull those nine off of the herd in July we will cull anyone else who is not fat. They will have had access to all you can eat green grass and their bodies should have been able to put the weight back on by then. We already have some ewes getting fat on the green grass. We want to cull hard this year so lambing next January will be easy on everyone.

Mr. Rainman found a two week lamb that was weak and being ignored. We ended up taking care of it for 24 hours as our normal go to person was out of town. We managed to keep it alive despite it not really wanting to eat. It is now with it’s forever home and if it is gonna make it will be there.

The barn got put together, we tore down all the jugs and hung the panels on the walls, put up all of the buckets and feeders. When we go to clean out the barn we will just need to take the feeders out.

We also got the alpaca shearing area all cleaned up and ready to shear. Hopefully, we can shear the alpaca in the next week. They just need to be dry, it rained off and on all day today. We got 1/3” of rain and it was needed. The garden and grass fields needed it. The parts I ordered for the new pump are still not here. I am afraid the tariffs and shipping issues may have delayed its arrival. Hopefully, it gets here in the next two weeks.

  • Date of update- May 11, 2025
  • # of Lambs born – 73
  • # of ewes who have delivered babies – 42
  • # of ewes still pregnant – should be ZERO, but I saw one today that was so fat already. It would have to be an immaculate conception or a through the fence encounter.
  • # of single lamb births – 13
  • # of twin lamb births – 27
  • # of triplet lamb births – 2
  • # tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-35
  • # tagged female lambs-30
  • # of bummer lambs – 3
  • # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 6
  • Total # of lambs on farm -63
  • % birthing rate- 174%
  • % production rate -150%
  • % survival rate at birth – 100%
  • % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 86%

Lambogedden is here

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This weekend we continued to accumulate lambs. I had to take some time on Friday to expand the momma/baby area inside the barn. We had been losing lambs left and right. We have had five die. One hung himself on the fence, one got stomped in the doorway and three others just died. We had one stillborn lamb but it was incredibly small and may have been born alive but we did not find it until we were feeding and found it in the straw on the floor. Because of the crushed lamb we decided to build a ramp out of gravel around the entrance. This way the lambs don’t have to try and jump up into the barn. I also found a couple of boards to fill the gap so when the door is open it is a straight shot into the barn. This is working well but I may have to bring in a second bucket of gravel in a few days after the lambs and sheep use it. They will compact it and make the slants slide down, but this is okay, we have more gravel.

We have lost so many lambs that when Annmarie discovered a weak one Saturday night she just bottle fed it up. It has been alive for six days but its mother is one of the oldest ewes we have and she is so skinny it is not healthy. We don’t think the ewe is producing enough milk for the lamb. The lamb’s name is Francine and she already likes humans a lot as they bring her warm milk in a bottle! I fed her this morning and she now tends to follow us around when we are out doing sheep things.

Annmarie thinks we only have eight more ewes to give birth and one we put in a jug tonight because you could see her water membrane sticking out. It looked like a miniature ballon. She will have lamb(s) tonight. We have opened up the momma/baby outside area to include the barn lot where the horse is located. She doesn’t mind the lambs and ewes. They just don’t get to eat her hay, she will chase them away from her food. The grain we cracked last weekend is getting used up fast. We have used all the open containers we had up and are about 2/3 through one of the 55 gallon drums. We still have another 55 gallon drum. We have put out creep feed for the lambs but they have not caught on to the fact that it is there. In four days when all the ewes have had lambs we can set up a couple more buckets in the creep feed area to see if we can entice some lambs into the area. We have some feed out they are just not eating it yet. If the lambs will start consuming creep feed they will cut down on the ewe’s calorie demand.

  • Date of update- April 6 2025
  • # of Lambs born – 62
  • # of ewes who have delivered babies – 35
  • # of ewes still pregnant – 8 we think
  • # of single lamb births – 10
  • # of twin lamb births – 23
  • # of triplet lamb births – 2
  • # tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs- no tags done yet
  • # tagged female lambs- no tags done yet
  • # of bummer lambs – 1
  • # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 5
  • Total # of lambs on farm -56
  • % birthing rate- 177%
  • % production rate -160%
  • % survival rate at birth – 98.4%
  • % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 90%

Staycation day 5

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It seems like every project is two steps forward and one back. I was able to work on the machine shed ridge line install yesterday. I had found some small two foot peak sections somewhere on the farm but they were not enough to cover the entire ridge line. I purchased some trough metal that I turned upside down and used as ridge cap. It was at a close out and I only paid about $8/piece. I was trying to use up my leftover roofing screws from the barn. The only problem is I ran out with only 27 left to be installed. They are oversized as I was reusing metal tin and needed a larger size to go through the existing holes. This meant I had to drill a pilot hole first. I drilled those 27 holes before climbing down from the roof and of course could not find a #14 screw anywhere in town. I had some #10 but they were red! I ended up ordering some and they should be here this week. Luckily, I ran out of screws as the sun was heating the roof up to unbearable temperatures but I kept trying to get it all done so I would not have to climb back up on the roof. I ended up going to town to get some oak, some trim for the cook stones enclosure, sheep and lamb pellets and some bolts to fix the gazebo door.

I had enough time to repair the gazebo door, cut off the door handle bolt and install a new one. I still ended up beating and bending the door into submission to get it on. Our original plan was to use the door to get to the grill outside after I built a lean to on the back of the gazebo. Nope, not going to happen. That door will be staying shut, it took a hammer and a couple of minutes to get it shut the first time. The grill will be going inside the gazebo. I just have to figure out where the grill is going to go as I need to run the power to that spot.

Today I took the second repaired cattle feeder out into the alleyway and got it ready for a large bale. I dumped some more scraps onto the burn pile. All the burn piles are starting to grow pretty fast now as we continue cleaning up. I got the weight box for the tractor and took it over to the machine shop so it could be repaired. The supports keep bending from the weight of all the metal horse shoes. I beat on the three point supports with an eight pound sledge hammer then proceeded to weld some supports on all three attachment points. I am hopeful that it will keep them from bending now during the winter use. I am still welding pretty roughly but it is holding and that is the main purpose for my welding skills.

I took 1000# of sheep and lamb feed out to the barn. We are storing the sweet feed in the large grainbin we have in the momma/baby area. I put 450# in it today and I am pretty sure I can fit another 1000# in it. The lamb creep feed gate is up and we are now feeding the lambs where the mommas cannot reach. This should hopefully help the mommas not slough so much weight. I took all of the leftover feed bags and net wrapping and bagged it all up and took it out of the barn. Annmarie had been complaining about there being no box knives out in the barn. I found two knives in the trash bin, some lamb nutrient mix and some hoof treatment powder. So now we know where all of that is located.

Annmarie really wants the house number holder completed so I started welding that project today. I am a mediocre welder so hopefully this turns out well. I got the rough frame welded today but had to let it cool off before I could work on it some more. Tomorrow I will grind it smooth and try and make it pretty. Hopefully the tile will still slide into the end. We will know tomorrow!

The porch lights went out for the third time! This is after I wired the new ones in. I took the main one down again, took it all apart and used a voltmeter this time to check everything and the switch. It turns out that it was the cheap porch light bulbs. They had blown up with all of our power losses. I bought LED this time!