farm life

Lambing coming to a close soon

Steve HardinLeave a comment

We had some help this morning with the lambs: Gingerman, Mr Rainman and the Lamb Whisperer. The Lamb Whisperer had not been out to the farm before but she fed Francine then caught lambs while I tagged and banded. It took us a couple of hours to tag and banded 59 lambs.

We had to bummer off one very healthy lamb as its mother rejected it. We are continuing to feed Francine morning and night and she must be getting milk from somewhere else because she is only taking a 12 ounce bottle morning and night. The nice thing is she hangs with her mother until the morning or evening feed then she hunts down a human and hollers at them until they feed her. She was so insistent last night that she ended up riding on the tractor with me while her bottle was getting mixed. She just rode in my arms without any difficulties.

One of the lambs had a piece of grass under its eyelid so the Gingerman washed it out and he and Mr Rainman got it out of the lamb’s eye.

We were able to catch lambs in one area of the barn and once tagged/banded they were let loose on the other side of the gate. This kept all the tagged lambs in one area, only a couple got out and back in with the mommas. It went fairly smooth. I was glad we waited as I had two boys that I was almost not able to find both testicles on when banding. I don’t believe I could have done it had they been any younger. By pure happenstance both genders ended up using #431. We use blue tags for boys and some form of pink/red for the girls. This makes it much easier to spot gender when looking at tags. Hard to believe that we have had over 850 lambs since we started raising sheep.

The Lamb Whisperer had done her part and proceeded to head home once she learned that installing the toilet was next on the list.

The stats had to be updated to reflect the number of lambs that have died and been born. Once we counted today it was a lot higher than I anticipated. We only have one lamb left to tag, the one born today. I think there are three more ewes that need to give birth. There is at least one for sure!

  • Date of update- April 13, 2025
  • # of Lambs born – 68
  • # of ewes who have delivered babies – 39
  • # of ewes still pregnant – 3, I think
  • # of single lamb births – 12
  • # of twin lamb births – 25
  • # of triplet lamb births – 2
  • # tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-32
  • # tagged female lambs-27
  • # of bummer lambs – 2
  • # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 6
  • Total # of lambs on farm -60
  • % birthing rate- 174%
  • % production rate -154%
  • % survival rate at birth – 100%
  • % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 88.2%

Lambogedden is here

Steve HardinLeave a comment

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%

Bathroom remodel day 37

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Well, I have put three more days in on the bathroom. It is going, not smoothly but it is progressing. On Friday I was able to get the plumbing parts installed. I only had to go two stores to find what I needed. Unfortunately, I discovered a couple of issues. These are what I will be referring to as endearing quirks in the future. The first issue was I could not get any hot water, only cold to come out of the shower head. I thought I had reversed the valve insert and I could simply turn it 180 degrees and solve the problem. After much consideration it dawned on me that I had plumbed the hot and cold backwards. The instructions were quite explicit on how to install the valve body such that the hot and cold would not be backwards. I read the instructions repeatedly as this is not really repairable unless I tear into the hallway wall and correct if from the back. So as a constant reminder that I did the bathroom the hot and cold water are reversed in the shower. There is also an insert that I did not raise the floor high enough so it collects water.

Currently, we are going to live with it for now and see how it goes. That won’t be hard as we are still not using the shower. The bathroom has no ventilation fan, lights or heater. We need to get the wood sealed and the ceiling up before using the shower. Saturday and Sunday I worked on getting the tongue and groove installed on the upper walls. What I did not realize until I was two boards deep was that for some odd reason I had two sizes of tongue and groove boards. The groove and tongue were smaller on one set. Needless to say this was not discovered until I was unable to marry two pieces with a large hammer being involved. I then had to sort out the two types and discovered that I had enough to complete each sidewall in their own type. This meant I only had pieces that did not match to do the end wall. I ended up with a trip to Home Depot to get ten tongue and groove blue pine boards. I had to look through 50 boards to find ten worth buying that did not have horrible cracks or knocked out knot holes. I would recommend waiting a month before going there to buy any.

I was able to use these to finish the end wall today. It took forever to get the walls installed as each single piece of wood had to be sanded smooth. No one puts a smooth finish on wood any more, it all has to be sanded. This takes quite a while. I had hopes of getting the ceiling installed this weekend also but that did not happen. I am going to see if I cannot work on the ceiling this week. The sheep are lambing so it is taking me two hours after work out in the barn to get everyone fed and put up for the night so there is not a lot of time left for the bathroom.

Annmarie and I found a mirror kicking around in the house when we were setting up her sewing room. It used to go on a men’s butler drawer I believe. I had this great idea to install it on the wall in our walk in closet. She told me it was fine but it was not going to do her any good. I got some metal pieces to hold it in place and installed it this weekend.

Lambing week one

Steve HardinLeave a comment

This weekend marked day seven of the lamb experience. We are doing surprisingly well. That green grass at the end of the year really helped the ewes out. They went into winter with the most weight they have ever had. This is reflected in the sheer quantity of lambs that are being born. It doesn’t help that we did not really cull out any ewes last year so we have almost 50 ewes and close to 200% productivity. We could have 70-80 lambs running around. They are already underfoot everywhere you go. They are incredibly cute and very loud at the same time.

  • Date of update- March 30 2025
  • # of Lambs born – 36
  • # of ewes who have delivered babies – 19
  • # of ewes still pregnant – Approximately 25 in area, I don’t think they are all pregnant
  • # of single lamb births – 4
  • # of twin lamb births – 13
  • # of triplet lamb births – 2
  • # tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs- 0
  • # tagged female lambs-0
  • # of bummer lambs – 1
  • # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 2
  • Total # of lambs on farm -33
  • % birthing rate- 189%
  • % production rate -174%
  • % survival rate at birth – 100%
  • % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 92%

Mr Rainman worked on cracking grain on Saturday while I did the grout patching in the bathroom. I had picked up three metal 55 gallon drums with lids this week and he proceeded to fill two of them with cracked grain. We now have a 55 gallon drums, two metal trash cans full of chicken feed. We were able to take two full 55 gallon drums with cracked grain to the barn so we can feed the nursing ewes some grain twice a day.

The lambs really are not bright. We had one hang himself in the fence on Friday evening. He stuck his head over the woven wire and then reached down to reach back into the same field. This caused his nose to get stuck behind the wire and he hung himself. We had just been out there two hours earlier! The lambs are so small that they keep getting out of the momma/baby area by just crawling through the woven wire. They get stuck outside the fence and start hollering incessantly. So today we lined the bottom of the fence with boards so that the little lambs cannot crawl out. This is no guarantee but it should work.

On Saturday, I was talking to Mr Rainman and looked up to see a ewe have a baby. It literally just popped out! The placental sack was still intact and we watched the lamb flop around inside the sack. After a couple of minutes I realized that the lamb was not going to break out of its coffin. I walked out there and had to tear apart three layers of “sack” to get the lamb’s head out of the covering and out of the liquid. I drug it out of the rest of the sack and then chased the ewe over to near it. We then left to see if nature would reverse course. The ewe did come over and start cleaning the lamb off. We now have that ewe and both twins in a jug inside the barn. I saved a life!

Today we cleaned out the strawberry bed but did not see any asparagus starts poking out. If we did not drown them last year they should be coming in very soon. We also trimmed the blackberries and raspberries. I realize we are late getting them trimmed but they did get done. I also dug up a row of dirt and shoved cut off raspberries in it. I am trying to propagate another row of raspberries.

Mr Rainman will come out this week and do annual repairs on the sprayer and start spraying fields 1 & 2.

Bathroom day 36

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Spring is coming! I need to be done with the bathroom! There are a lot of things to do outside now that spring is here. Instead on Friday a little mastic was mixed up and the three tiles were set. We then went out to the old chicken coop and brought in all of the blue pine tongue and groove siding. We measured it and I did the math, we should have an extra 6 sq feet. The air compressor and nailers were drug out and we determined that we don’t have any 16 gage finish nails short enough. Some will have to be purchased. The 18 g nailer will only take 1.25” nails and I want at least 1.5”. Those are now purchased and ready to go.

Since we now had to wait for the bathroom to dry out for a day before patching the grout we went outside and started to drag the gravel road in an attempt to work out the potholes. We spent a couple of hours dragging the driveway with the box blade and the arena groomer. It turned out pretty good and there are currently no pot holes in the driveway.

We have been having so many lambs that Mr Rainman and I ended up rearranging the barn. We made the momma/baby area bigger.

Saturday a batch of epoxy grout was mixed up. All I had to do was patch the bad areas and then clean every hour. I did this and two hours later found three little pin holes. A fresh batch of grout had to be mixed up so I could swipe a single time in a single spot. It was some serious overkill but totally necessary. We have one batch of grout left if needed.

I unpacked the inset vanity that goes over the toilet. I thought I was going to have to set it first before putting up the tongue and groove wall board. It was going to require a lot of specialize cuts. I traced out the cupboard pattern onto the plywood so I could start getting a feel for how I was going to cut this board. Annmarie came in, looked at it and said that I could just set the insert over the wall boards! This will make it so much easier. I plan on getting the wallboards installed next weekend. Mr Rainman will be gone and it is something I can do without any help.

Annmarie and I are so confident of the shower that we ordered the shower curtain rod and soap holders. I will be finishing the plumbing install next weekend also. I was informed that the rest of the bathroom can be a work in progress as long as the shower works.