hay

2018 started with a clean slate

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It is so much nicer to go out to the barn now that the Ram is no longer breathing. Some would claim that he is no longer of this earth. Not me, he is in our freezer, a friends freezer, his head and hide are being practiced on by a budding taxidermist and all his leftover parts are feeding all the wild animals. He is being very productive and generous in his death.

On Jan 1, we threw out fresh straw and neatened up the barn. Our supply of grass hay for the horses is dwindling quickly. Normally, the horses just eat what we feed the sheep but this year we got straight alfalfa for the sheep. I have some large bales that are a mix and we may have to break open one of those and feed it out to the horses. We have had no bummer lambs since the ram’s demise. We are fairly certain now that he was the cause of most of our 9 bummer lambs. Our bummer lady said that she has only lost one of the 9 lambs. She usually has around a 50% mortality as they are bummers for a reason. He is not missed. I can now wade through the barn and pet the ewes. There about 15 that come up and will let you scratch on them. We are still having babies. It should be ending soon. We were starting to sweat about running out of hay, farm nightmares are rooted in this calamity. It looks like we are going to make it no problem. We will be close on the small bales in the barn but we are going to have extra large bales. Hopefully, the snow will continue to pile up in the mountains.

Chores

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Today was catchup day. This needs to happen every once in a while. The cows needed food but I didn’t want to go outside twice into the cold. So I held off going out until early afternoon and I could do all the chores at once.

We had our first set of twin lambs two weeks ago, then a second set a week later and a third set two days ago and another set today! Eight babies from four deliveries is mighty nice. The babies don’t know to be scared of humans and are very curious. Today this little nugget would not leave me alone and tried to follow me out of the barn as I was trying to shut all the mommas and untagged babies into the baby area. They are very cute and cuddly at the one week old mark. The ones born today were born this afternoon outside. They were still wet and the momma had not delivered the afterbirth yet. She was super flighty so I ended up having to close off the end of the barn and use her babies as bait to get her into the barn. We usually throw the afterbirth outside the barn window and the cats or magpies eat it.

The vet came out to the house yesterday and cut away the affected portion of Mika’s hoof. The White Line disease came back but its not near as bad as last time. An added bonus was not having to haul the horse into the vet clinic. We are still searching for an affordable used stock trailer.

The dogs have to help when I feed the cows. Especially, when the cows think they are starving. There was still a little alfalfa left where the feeder should of been. The cows had tipped the feeder over, I suspect that was the work of the bull. If I don’t take the dogs the cows will not stay back and let me put the collapsible feeder around the large bale. Its hard to move the feeder around when 13 cows are bum rushing the bale of feed.

I took the time today to dig out a loading platform out of the hillside. It actually looked like there night have been one there in the past. It doesn’t have a fancy platform but you can back a trailer up to it and load a piece of equipment onto the trailer. We may need it for the old tractor we sold and since the ground is not frozen solid yet I figured today was the day to make it happen. Especially since I think it will snow before Christmas. I even fed Bob in the machine shop. He has been sneaking down to Donna’s to get extra food. I saw one of the new feral adult cats in the window of the barn two days ago when I went to feed. Other than that I have not seen any of the three new cats. One died a mysterious death. Annmarie spotted another dead cat down on the main road. We honestly think its an owl or hawk. We have a resident hawk that is now coming up to the house and flying over all the time. It hollers and screams when it sees the dogs or cats or humans. We are the interlopers in its world.

I have had to change the way I am billing feed for the chicken spread sheet. Now that I cannot store large quantities of food (thank you mice) I can store up to 200 pounds in two large metal trash cans. I am just expensing out the feed for the month I buy it even if it goes halfway through the next month. I did manage to collect seven eggs today from 25 chickens. I usually do about 33% production rate in the winter so 8 eggs is what I would like to collect on a daily basis this Winter, not quite there yet.

There is one pregnant ewe that is almost as wide as she is long. It is a sight to see. I sure hope she only has triplets and that they are all alive. I didn’t have very good luck last year with keeping the ewe I had to pull lambs from alive. I have a 50% survival rate after pulling lambs from two separate ewes in the last eight years. Honestly, only having had to do it twice is pretty amazing considering we have had over 300 babies.

There have been several Mountain lions killed in the immediate vicinity of our farm. There is not even snow on the ground yet. We suspected one was hanging around the barn last winter so hopefully this year will be a better year or I might have to get a tag.

I am getting ready for the house floor tile install. I ordered screws off of Amazon and some extra driver bits oh and I did do a little Christmas shopping online and all of that will be here by in three days!! It is truly amazing how fast a purchase can get to us in rural America. Annmarie reminded me I need to calculate how much grout is needed and get it ordered. It takes two weeks to show up and its a custom order. So I will get that ordered next week.

Benevolent dictatorship

Steve Hardin3 Comments

Today was the day to pick up straw for the barn. We usually use 25-30 bales a year for the sheep and horses. I like to buy 60 bales at a time and just store them in the barn. The nice thing about straw is it just gets drier! Therefore it works better at absorbing moisture.

Unfortunately the new toy, hay elevator, is in the way. So I will need to move the old alfalfa out of the way, the grass hay to the other side of the room and then pile the straw into the previously occupied corner. A whole 60 bales equaling 2.5 tons of straw costing $150. I of course used my fancy 7500lb capacity trailer. It only had 5000lbs on it and it looks like it is crying every time I load it. I had to beat out the tire fender on the left side again. I keep hitting stuff with the trailer, maybe. I never feel the trailer hit anything. I think something is attacking my trailer with a hammer. I think its gremlins. I noticed a second new dent while the trailer was being loaded. I am seriously considering airbags or an extra spring leaf to stiffen the trailer. It’s on the list to do something about. Annmarie reminded me that I need to advertise the enclosed trailer so we will have the cash necessary for a used stock trailer. We want a decent one 10 feet long. I would like a stock trailer as they are sturdier than a horse trailer. The dogs and I had a discussion about our ruling style while we were feeding last night. I started out with the democratic process and told them we were going to the barn to work. They seemed super excited and came running. Then they did not want to stay in the hay area while I fed the horses. So we switched to a benevolent dictatorship model. This appeared to work until they got bored then they tried to sneak away. I finally put them in the sheep area to hold off the sheep so I could feed. I have not had to have a clubbing match with the ram yet this fall and am attempting to hold it off for the entire winter. The dogs are my solution to him wanting to be macho man all the time. I was in the hay room, the dogs were in the sheep area and the sheep started to come in. I cannot see anything but I hear much commotion and start hollering automatically at the dogs to stay still. When I came around the corner both dogs were laying down but Mouse had advanced another 10 feet closer to the sheep. We had to switch to a strict dictator model and I gave them both a severe lecture about the politics involved and why it was necessary. Usually, we operate on the benevolent dictator model and the dogs do fine.

My new toy!

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Our last big hurdle for moving bales has been solved. Our favorite, only, housekeeper told me about it. She saw it on Craigslist and I happened to see her message quickly. I sent pm immediately requesting it. Only $80 for a used hay lift!!! I had to drive 75 miles for it leaving directly from work. Now this meant hooking the trailer up in the dark. Not something I have done before. Not easy to do as I had not dropped the trailer off in a nice flat open area with a straight approach. I bumped the trailer off its hitch stand, block of wood and could not raise the tongue above the ball on my pickup stinger. So I ended up wrapping the trailer chains around the hitch onto themselves and lowering tongue until the elevator Post was retracted fully and I could skip the three inch piece of wood under and raise tongue back up. I only needed 1/2” of course but without that I could not physically lift trailer tongue and my handyman jack was not in the trailer box where it should of been. I need to find it.

The elevator is 20’ long and is electric. The motor got put in the cab of the pickup to keep it dry. I need to put some tape and red rags in my trailer box also. It kinda hung over the end but it was pitch dark by then so I figured I would just go with it.

We have been looking at these used and they go for around $700-900. We looked at brand new and it’s $1700. We were going to go with the new one just to ensure it functioned perfectly, but for $80 we have personality!!

A new motor is only $215 so either way we come out way ahead. I need to get it unloaded off the trailer and into the barn and get the motor all attached. I need to see how it works then I need to duct tape a bunch of loose wires to the rails and neaten it up with a lot of duct tape. I also want to stiffen a few spots with some hose clamps. Like I said, it’s going to have a lot of personality!

Hay no more

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Today I picked up the last of the hay, 8 more tons. Bring on the Winter! Our animals should be good to go. I had to get all large bales, 1300#. Since the big tractor is on hiatus until I can figure out what is wrong with it. So I used my little tractor to push the bales off of the flat bed. So now I have 12 bales in a fairly wide area just hanging out waiting for me to push them to their respective drop off/eating point.

Someone came over to look at the old tractor but the problem never appeared. I drove the tractor out and picked up a bale with no issues. We did give the tractor about 2.5 gallons of hydraulic fluid and found most of the leaks. Two of the leaks look like fairly straight corrective issues. I just need to put some teflon tape on the joints and retighten. I do need to go through and grease all the zirks to ensure everything is loose and slippery.

So after my assistant left I attempted to get the bales into the machine shop. Just as I was getting the first bale into the machine shed the tractor started to do that whole starved for fuel thing. I need to get some carburetor gum out spray. Maybe that will fix the problem.

I spent Friday building on my rock wall on the back hillside. I was supposed to go help someone trim llama hooves so I did not want to get the hillside fence laid down and have to leave. I used the tractor mistress to scrape dirt and build up the wall. The gate I had installed was pulling the post over. As Annmarie puts it she “told me so” and I should not have swung that gate out over air. I could not dig the post down as far as I wanted due to all the rocks. So I leveled off the gate area and cut into the back hill side so the gate could swing the other way. I will also install a wheel on the end of the gate so there won’t be any pressure on the end of the gate causing the post to move. I tried to tamp gravel down around the loose post but it just did not stiffen the post enough. I removed the gate and will put it on the other side of the opening as those posts are nice and stiff.

Bob the cat got out of his enclosure today. He is 2-3 years old and unwanted. He is also fixed! So we made a pen and kept him in the machine shed for 8 days. Today, I let him out and he disappeared into the machine shed. We will provide food for him out there and he can live out his life eating mice and cat food.

Out kitty in the barn is doing well. He loves to get petted on more than eating cat food. I usually only see him once a day inside the barn. He lives in the barn with the old tomcat. We need a couple more cats to live out in the barn. We feed the cats on our back porch, the barn and the machine shop now.