chickens

Freezer room moving right along

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Mr Rainman came out on Sunday and we moved a ton of hay from the machine shed back into the barn. There was some green hay poking out of the machine shed pile and once we started digging into the pile we managed to get a flat bed load of really nice hay out of the middle of the pile. Between both sides of the barn we have enough hay for the winter.

I am trying to get the freezer room completed so we can move the freezers. Mr Rainman keeps trying to talk me into using some of my 1×8 or 1×10 wide pine boards for the walls and ceiling. I keep telling him it’s a freezer room and it only gets the scraps. We had purchased some leftover piles from the stores in town and I am finally using a bunch of the sheets. So the walls in the freezer room are made out of 1/2” OSB (two different kinds), 3/4” OSB flooring, 3/4” oak plywood, 1/2” CDX plywood, some old 3/4” solid wood piece from an old table top. I have 1/2” OSB for ceiling with some new vintage 70’s looking wood paneling! I spray painted some blue on the walls to mark where the wiring was behind the sheets so I would not accidentally hit anything when I install the shelves for this room. All in all a very functional freezer room when I am done. I did have to order an in window fan so we can keep the room a little cooler in the summer. I am going to use a WiFi power plug dongle to control the fan. I will be able to program the start and stop times remotely via the phone.

I managed to get all of the freezer walls covered but one side about 46” wide. So one full sheet of OSB and two cutouts for the outlets and I am done with the walls. I will still need to put some trim in the corners to make it look pretty.

I was sent out to change the bee’s feeding solution. They are getting some sugar water due to the shrinking flower supply. I spent about 15 minutes tossing apples from the ground in the orchard to the sheep. They were all wandering around trying to eat as many apples as they could. I even throw the dried out husks of apples, the sheep think they are dried apple treats. Annmarie has been using a “picker”, this wooden box with a ton of nails at cross angles with a sliding lid with more nails. Basically, it looks like a medieval hand shredding torture device. It is used to open up the alpaca fiber after she washed and sound dried it. It is working and she almost has the entire fleece picked.

The chickens are trying to compete with the sheep this year over who can die faster without a reason. I think the chickens are ahead this year. Another one of my babies was sick. I have to remove them from the coop so they don’t make anyone else sick. It’s usually some type of bird flu. On top of the chickens trying to die I have four broody hens who are refusing to lay eggs but want to sit on everyone else’s. Plus I am only getting 1-2 eggs/day.

Catch up

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Last weekend was utilized as catchup time. After being gone for a couple of weeks we still had more things to complete to get ready for summer. Annmarie went and got two huge pots for our front entrance. We have a few volunteer lavender plants coming up in our patch and wanted a place for them. We are also going to put a wooden post in the pots so we can hold open the porch gates. We really only need them closed when the sheep are in the yard. Both dogs know how to open them both ways! So they are not a deterrent to them when it comes to getting on the front porch. The planters were heavy and did not provide a great spot to grab onto when moving them.

On Friday I drove over to LaGrande and picked up our second ram (Remie). I just put the animal pickup enclosure on and he rode in that. We want the sheep to lamb in a timely fashion and believe that if there is competition then all of the ewes will get impregnated in a single cycle. So we will have 2 rams and 45 ewes. We put both rams in the corral for about 36 hours to make sure they would cohabitate nicely. There was a lot of butt sniffing but they never fought. We let them out with the ewes and they are doing just fine. I cannot see that they are doing their job but we will know in five months if they are.

Saturday was spent cleaning up around the farm. The footings for the bridge were started. They have to be dug out first then I can build the concrete wooden footings and put some metal in the hole then it can be filled with concrete. We are going to use my small electric concrete mixer when we do it. It will only mix about 200# of sackrete at a time. It’s going to take a while to get the footings poured.

The sprayer had to be cleaned out and set back up on the tractor. Mr Rainman worked on that. We had a couple of plugged nozzles from the last usage and he went through the entire setup and got it all cleaned up. He also greased and filled all tractor fluids on both tractors. Mr Flow is going to work on cutting thistles down along the back creek. It’s not glorious work but it needs to be done. Once the thistles are knocked down then he can clean out the chicken coop.

I was pretty sure we had a chicken predator as I could only find five chickens once we got back from vacation and was only getting one egg a day. So on Sunday, Mr Rainman and I worked on skirting the old house. I crawled under it first to make sure there were no dead animal carcasses. Lo and behold there was a passel of live chickens. We chased them out by me tossing rocks and Mr Rainman beating on the outside skirting. Otherwise, I would have been crawling and chasing chickens under the building. Once the chickens were out we locked them up in the coop and proceeded to skirt the building. We also built an enclosure around the laser vent fan to keep the weather off of it. Once that was done we built a rain lean to over the fan enclosure and outlet to prevent water from getting on any of it. This was supposed to happen a while ago but got put on the back burner.

I have started working on the freezer room floor. I need to cut diagonal floor supports to make the floor level. The only problem was I burned up the table saw blade and I have multiple replacements for the radial arm saw and hand skilsaw, but none for the table saw! I need to cut five more and we can then shim the floor level and get it down. This is the next big thing for the old house remodel. Once the floor is in I can slap up the wall from scrap plywood I have saved for this purpose. I can then move all three freezers and install some shelves into the room. Once that is done its onto my room! I think I have enough wood scraps for the walls to be sheeted so its pretty much installing two doors and finish the wiring and insulate two walls. I expect it to take me a year or more to finish my side. I really need to just focus on getting all of the switches and outlets installed.

Due to the heat I had to come up with a way to keep water and Gatorade cold. The front spring is 40F year round so I took an old broken bucket and placed it in the ditch and filled it with drinks. It doesn’t keep them ice cold but they are cool and easy to drink plus its free.

Dang Dog

Ann Marie HardinLeave a comment

I think every puppy gets a post like this. And it’s really, at the base of it all, our fault. We know it – every time. As usual, we haven’t spent enough time actually training the puppy, and now we get to pay the price for that. The good news is that no-one was hurt. The only potential casualty is my cell phone, and maybe a pair of shoes. I should start at the beginning.

Steve had asked Mr. Professional to check on chicks at the local feed supply store. Steve had not mentioned this to me, but Mr. Professional had, so I was not completely surprised by the early morning text from Steve begging for Sarah and I to bail him out and pick up the chicks, all necessary supplies, and get the brooder out of the chicken coop where it lives. He assured us the chicks would be ready at 10:00am, and that the feeder and waterer were in the brooder. Now, it’s important to understand that for the past several years we have been timing our chick purchase so that they can brood out in the coop in the baby Fort Knox Steve built for this exact purpose. So it’s been a while since we have used this particular setup.

Sarah was tasked with getting the brooder all put together while I picked up chicks, bedding, feed and a new heat lamp. As is usual, when I arrived, I was told things were not exactly as we had anticipated. I thought I was picking up 25 reserved chicks of unknown breed. The feed and supply place said they weren’t doing reservations this year and the limit was 10 chicks. At that time I was only the fourth person to show up for chicks so I took my number and gave the chicken lady my sob story. She said she would ease up on the limit since it didn’t look like too many people were waiting (there were only four of us at that moment) but that the chicks wouldn’t be ready to go for another forty minutes or so. Well, the feed and supply store is never a place I mind shopping in, so I wandered around, filling my cart with things we need or will need soon. I picked up some T-post sprinklers for the pasture we are going to reseed this year, some new gardening gloves for when I can eventually get into the garden, and the chicken supplies. I didn’t do too bad. Only two items of clothing made it into my cart. The rest were honest-to-goodness farm necessities. Really they were. I went back to the chicken lady with my number 4 in hand, and discovered that there were now 11 people waiting for chicks. I was not going to get my desired 25. But, I talked her into 12, so I could live with that. I checked out, got loaded up, and dove home.

Sarah had everything set up, but after some consultation and consideration of the coming holiday (Easter is in 10 days), we decided we needed to move the chicks upstairs to inside office (as opposed to my new office). So, the bedding, the brooder, the headlamp, feed, feeder, and what Sarah thought was the waterer went upstairs. It turns out the waterer was missing. What Sarah thought was a waterer was another feeder. We got the bedding spread, and the chicks in the brooder, and I tasked Sarah with filling the feeder while I called Steve to see where he thought the waterer might be. All of his suggestions were various locations in the coop, so I kept him on the phone so he could offer clarifications while I went out the the chicken coop. All was well until I opened the side gate.

Chance, who had not rushed a gate in ages dashed out that gate and straight to the overturned horse feeder where the rooster and a hen were sheltering from the rain. The hen beat her off and ran for the coop, so she turned her attention to the rooster. She chased him all over the ram pasture, with me shouting, “Chance, No!” at regular intervals, while not chasing her since that would only enhance the game. Eventually the rooster turned his circle back towards the coop, and hunkered down in a corner behind me. I wasn’t able to get my hands on the puppy, but I was able to give the rooster a chance to get to safety. Chance was not too sad, and took off for a turn around the pasture. I was done yelling at her, and called her over so she could get back in the yard. All was going well – she was actually coming back – until she noticed the gate to the sheep was open. She put on the brakes and dashed through that gate at full speed.

Now I was chasing her, and hollering, “NO!!” since she was headed for the babies and mommas. She ran them back into the barn and turned to look at me as if to say, “Didn’t I do good!” I called her back and again everything looked OK. Until she saw the one lone ewe. There is something about loners that turns the dogs’ brains off. Chance locked on and wouldn’t let up. She was pushing the ewe towards, which would have been fine, but the ewe was panicked, and slipped in the creek. The next thing I knew, Chance was also in the creek nipping at the ewe’s back legs. I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and say she was not actively trying to hamstring the ewe, but that is sure what it looked like! So I had pretty much no choice but to jump in the creek too and drag the dog off. Now we were all three in a corner by the little foot bridge at the end of the momma-baby pen and were in pretty close proximity to one another. I had Chance by the scruff. She kept eyeing the ewe until I finally started correcting that behavior – firmly. Chance go the message and eventually started sucking up to me. In the meantime, Mouse had decided to come help and was laying down pinning the ewe in place with his border collie stare. I needed help. So I tried to use Siri to call Sarah. Apparently Siri did not appreciate my panicked tone of voice and refused to respond. So I laid my cell phone on the nearby bridge and operated it one-handed to call Sarah. She came running out. She was able to call Mouse off, which freed the ewe to cross over the bridge (where my cell phone was still sitting) and run into the ram pasture. I got Chance and me up out of the creek, and realized my cell phone was no longer on the bridge. Yep – it was in the cold muddy rushing creek – nowhere in sight. My shoes were full of mud and water, and I was wet up to my knees. Sarah came back and took Chance. I knelt down on the bridge and felt around the creek bottom. Miraculously I touched my cell phone and was able to fish it out. There was no apparent damage, and it was still on, so I am hopeful.

The ewe was walking rather stiffly, but made it back to the barn where she can dry out and warm up. Chance is completely unrepentant and is unaware of the forthcoming nightly training sessions. I’m pretty sure my shoes are ruined. My cell phone might recover. It’s supposed to be able to tolerate water up to 6 feet for up to 30 minutes. We will see.

There was no chick waterer in the coop. Steve is picking one up on his way home.

Minutiae abounds

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It’s been a long week and it Mother Nature cannot decide what she wants to do. It was clear and warming up at the beginning of the week, now there is snow on the ground and snowing again, we have about two inches on the ground currently. Annmarie has been using her office! I have been slowly putting little things in place. I got our old dining room table in there and we used some table elevators to lift it two inches so we could slide the smaller sorting bins under it. There are now six bins under the table. The new cable for the router came so I will be installing that soon and finishing up the corner trim to hide the cables. Gizmo has a new doggie bed, he didn’t like the old one it was too small for him he thought. Annmarie needs to start bringing out books but she is going to sort them first and thin them out. So I have resisted the temptation to remove them from our bedroom. I would like to see them thinned out also. There is a small table down at her mom’s that she wants me to retrieve and refinish. It has marker, paint and nail polish on it I think. It was from a long time ago when Sarah was a menace. She wants it to go in front of the couch.

I messed up last week and should have kept the two ewes and three lambs in the same pen I had them in when sorting them. I sorted the wrong babies but I did watch them nurse. The trouble was two days later both ewes were head butting the lambs and refusing to let them nurse. Unfortunately, in two days we ended up with three more bummers and another death. No clue why the lamb died, it may have been suffocated by its mother. We have been supplementing grain since the babies have popped out. The ewes are getting mighty skinny. We will be worming them again next week. We wanted to let them have the babies and have the babies be a little older. Last year our weight loss was due to worms. So we treated in the fall and are going to treat again in the early spring/late winter. I just need to verify we have enough medicine to treat all of the ewes.

We have been having a hard time finding bagged sheep feed. We keep looking but everyone else is looking and buying before us. I went ahead and reserved all of the lamb feed coming in this week so we can keep feeding the lambs using our creep gate. We figure if we can get the lambs to eat solid food they will take less calories away from the mothers. I worked on getting the creep gate installed in the opening of the pen under the stairs. I am not sure why we never thought of this before. I put in four eyelets and was able to attach it to one side with a metal pin. I need to get longer eyelets for the other side. I forgot it is a piece of rough cut lumber so its about 2.25” wide. My eyebolt was too short so I had to use the one inch piece next to it and tie on clips to the gate. The gate is not rigid but it does move around, about three inches, until I can get the new eyebolts installed. This movement does not seem to bother the lambs. They get in and out just fine.

I had to go in and pickup some lumber for the barn doors in the office so I grabbed enough to do the frames for the bathroom closet. I did one frame out of 1×4” boards but Annmarie thought it was too heavy. It is solid, no doubt about that. So I picked up a bunch of 1×2” boards to make new frames. I was not sure if my Kreg tool would do this thin of wood but I had no trouble drilling angled holes and assembling the frame with screws. I had to install three pieces on the front of the doors to attach magnets. Once I get all of the frames built I will need to cover up the outer edges of the closet with blue tape and then clamp each frame in place and drill a small hole through the frame and into the closet opening. This will mark my spot to drill the sink holes for the magnets that need to be installed on each side. The blue tape will help protect the wood and let me draw on the frame to mark their proper location.

Sheep update, not where we want to be

Steve HardinLeave a comment

There are a lot of lambs left to be born yet! I am pretty sure a couple of the ewes are not pregnant and we are going to be past the first 21 day ovulation cycle this week. We are going to need a second ram so this event does not drag out. We would like everyone to be born in a three week window. That is not going to happen this cycle again.

  • Date of update- Feb 12, 2023
  • # of Lambs born – 21
  • # of ewes who have delivered babies – 13
  • # of ewes still pregnant – 31 in area, I don’t think they are all pregnant
  • # of single lamb births – 6
  • # of twin lamb births – 6
  • # of triplet lamb births – 1
  • # tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-8
  • # tagged female lambs-5
  • # of bummer lambs – 2
  • # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 1
  • Total # of lambs on farm -18
  • % birthing rate- 162%
  • % production rate -138%
  • % survival rate at birth – 100%
  • % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 86%

We had another bummer, the ewe got distracted and forgot about one of her twins. Annmarie fed the baby and we left it for two hours with the ewe and it was still cold and laying down. She brought it into the house and warmed it up by the stove. She got it more alert and fed up. Tisha came and took the bummer away a few hours later.

I had on chicken die so there are only 11 layers left. Spring is coming, I have 2-3 chickens die every spring when the wild ducks come in to the back creek. I just replaced the light bulb again in the coop. I have been changing it every month due to the tweetie birds bouncing around inside the coop and breaking the light filament. I got LED lights this time.