We keep thinking that lambing season is going to be over, but it has not happened. I went out one night and had five lambs running around and could not find all the mothers. Annmarie had to come out when she got home and discovered that one of the lambs from the momma/baby area had gotten out. She claims it was from me going through door, I attempted to deflect that to squeezing through the wooden slats but that has never happened before so it was probably me. I had been focusing on moving two others who were laying by the door a third one could have snuck by. They are sneaky little creatures. They are still coming in waves, I went out this morning and found two sets of twins. It took me a while to find the first mother and while I did that one of the lambs disappeared into the crowd. By the time I found that one I discovered its twin and found another mother with twins. Luckily, she had self isolated in a back corner so it was easy to to push everyone else outside. I put both new sets of twins under the stairs.
Yesterday we had one twin that was hollering so Annmarie brought it inside the house for me to feed before work while she finished up feeding and watering everyone in the barn. I sat on the hallway floor and convinced the lamb to drink a few ounces. It was not the best bottle drinker. It got better with practice. When Annmarie came back in she wanted to make sure it was topped off as she was going to take it back outside and put it in with its momma and twin. She took it out as the ewe had been head butting the lamb. They do this to knock them away when they think they are not their lamb.
When Annmarie came back from work after noon, she went out and checked on the lamb and it was hollering and cold. She set up a pen in front of our propane stove using the dog pen. Once the lamb was fed she just put the lamb in the pen until we could get the lamb to its forever home. We are going to leave the pen up for a couple more weeks until the lambing is complete. It works way better than a cardboard box or laundry basket.
The baby chickens have finally decided to start laying eggs. The mini eggs are coming a few every day now. I feel guilty about adding them into our selling rotation but everyone has learned that the chicks start small and get bigger. We have the same few customers so they are used to it. If it starts getting out of control I will switch to 18 packs and charge the dozen price. We have done that before.
We are going to work the sheep today. We need to touch and catalog every single sheep on the property today. We have a buyer for our butcher weight lambs and we don’t know how many there are. Annmarie has been working diligently on a free database and we are starting to use it faithfully. Today we ensure we have every single animal in the database and then we will be able to track and give accurate predictions. We looked at upgrading the database this week to allowing us to do calculations and reports but they wanted $250 annually per person! We would have done the $250 but not $500-$750 if we add Sarah. It’s not worth that. So Annmarie helped me with an Apple spreadsheet to do some of the calculations. We probably need to create an all encompassing report for the entire year next.
I stayed out in the barn after sorting off the two sets of twins under the stairs. I moved the other two mothers and babies into the momma/baby area. This allowed me to tear down all the pens inside the barn making sorting much easier. I moved the feeders out of the way of the sorting chute. I dug out a couple of paths in the straw covered floor to allow me to move the panels and operate a couple of doors in the chute system. The straw/compost/excrement can get 12-18” deep in the barn and the chute is mounted at barn floor height so accommodations have to be made the later into winter we use the system.
These were the two sets of twins I found out in the barn this morning. There really are four lambs in there. There are two brown ones up against that wall on the left side of the picture. Both of these ewes are older, their tags are so worn that there are no more visible writing on them so we use the tag color to guess their age. I change the tag color every couple of years on the females. Red was the very first color we used to start tagging the female sheep. I have used the same blue tag color since inception since the boys all get sold off.
My wife made spreadsheet. I scrolled over to just show the last entry and totals. I am going to mockup the annual one based on quarterly reporting from items we need for taxes and our annual USDA report we file every January. The USDA is very diligent about getting a hold of us and going through the report. They send a couple of paper requests then start calling us until we complete the report over the phone. I have yet to fill out the paper and get it in on time.
You cannot count 19 ewes in this picture but it is almost all of the pregnant mothers. We have 2-3 favorite ewes in here. We would really like to keep the babies from our old lead ewe “#1”, our old solid brown ewe and the one in the bottom left corner of this picture. They are all hand tame and their babies are always super calm and grow up to be very calm ewes. Two of those ewes are old and skinny and may not survive another year. They are so skinny! We are feeding so much that the younger ewes are still very fat even after giving birth. So next year we may have to set up a special feed area just for them so we can give supplemental feed.
I was called by the lovely wife the morning following the bull escape. I had made it to work and was playing catch up. She called to tell me that the alpaca were out in the lower barley field. Now the field is actually growing wheat but the “Lower Barley Field” is its name as it was a field her dad developed to prove to his father that he could, hence the name. Now how on earth could the alpaca get into that field? Well, when I went into the field to chase the bull I left the gate open just in case the bull would not turn around, he could go out into the house area of the farm then we could run him into the correct field.
Annmarie used the dogs to move the alpaca. This is not the best technique as the alpaca will band together and run at the dogs. Luckily there are two dogs and they are sneaky. The alpaca get tired of one or the other sneaking behind them and biting them on the ankle. There was a large stare down contest going on as I pulled up to help. Annmarie had them all out of the field before I could get out of the car to assist.
It happened again, another bummer lamb this morning! This is just not acceptable. As promised I switched my schedule around to accommodate the demise of said ram. After breakfast I had plans to put him down and a helper was coming out at 1130. I would have been at it for a while by then but there was a true emergency that took priority.
Stewart Creek Somethings 