lamb productivity

Lambing update

February 20, 2023Steve HardinLeave a comment

This weekend some time had to be devoted to the sheep. The ewes have finally started to have lambs on a regular basis. We had ordered four more portable panels and they came. They come in two feet sections and have to be assembled. I put them all together on Friday. I had to go into town and get more grain for the ewes and mothers. We have been feeding them up for the last month. They had started to get skinny. So when I went out Saturday morning to check on the sheep I rearranged panels and built a couple more jugs. The jugs needed fresh bedding and feed buckets and water buckets filled. The mother/lamb area needed to be expanded also, by the time I was done two hours had passed.

Date of update- Feb 20, 2023
# of Lambs born – 35
# of ewes who have delivered babies – 21
# of ewes still pregnant – 23 in area, I don’t think they are all pregnant
# of single lamb births – 8
# of twin lamb births – 12
# of triplet lamb births – 1
# tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-11
# tagged female lambs-9
# of bummer lambs – 2
# of lambs who died in first two weeks – 1
Total # of lambs on farm -32
% birthing rate- 166%
% production rate -152%
% survival rate at birth – 100%
% survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 91%

We have a single lamb from one mother who makes the weirdest noise, it sounds like a cat! I tagged and banded him today and when I picked him up his rib cage is narrow and big. It is not the correct shape. We will be watching boy # 347 to see if he survives. The sheep are now at the annoying stage, they are super friendly and know that you are bringing good treats and they just want to be the first one to get them. We try and usher them gently out of the barn but after five minutes of trying to be gentle and quite we end up hollering at them to get out of the barn and chasing them out. There is only so much patience one can have before you realize that it is getting you nowhere and there are other things that need to be done.

Our spring is running a little muddy so I drove up the pastures to look and see how our pseudo soft spot was doing in field #2. It is pretty boggy and soft, I had to get out of the soft mud so I did not sink the tractor and there is running and standing water. There is one corner of the field that I had not marked out that is really soft. I need to mark it as off limits so in the spring when I need to cut hay I avoid that area.

Sheep update, not where we want to be

February 12, 2023February 12, 2023Steve 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.

Lamb day

February 3, 2023February 5, 2023Steve HardinLeave a comment

The sheep have taken up more of my staycation than I anticipated. I spent a whole day on Friday messing around with them. Due to all of the babies and only having one Jug left open It was determined I should tag and band babies. I usually just turn the babies loose and in a month try and match and catch random babies. It tends to be inaccurate and fairly labor intensive. Annmarie has been trying to get me to tag and band from the jugs for ages. The real problem is banding the lambs at that age is not easy. I have tagged and banded over 330 male lambs so I am pretty confident in getting it right now no matter the age. Plus it has the added benefit of actually being able to track each ewe accurately. Meathead helped me tag band and give selenium supplement to everyone in the jugs except the newborn twins under the stairs. We then put fresh straw in all of the used jugs and moved panels around to make the momma/baby area bigger and created a chute for the pregnant mommas to get into the barn. As the momma/baby group gets bigger we just keep giving them more of the front of the barn and the preggers get the smaller back half. It took us few years to figure this out! Nothing is ever easy when you start, there are a lot of hard lessons to getting a good routine down. The feeders get moved around also to correspond to the number of mouths needing fed.

Date of update- Feb 3, 2023
# of Lambs born – 15
# of ewes who have delivered babies – 8
# of ewes still pregnant – lots
# of single lamb births – 2
# of twin lamb births – 5
# of triplet lamb births – 1
# tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-6
# tagged female lambs-4
# of bummer lambs – 1
# of lambs who died in first two weeks – 1
Total # of lambs on farm -13
% birthing rate- 188%
% production rate -163%
% survival rate at birth – 100%
% survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 87%

Finally, office floor is ready for stain

January 30, 2023Steve HardinLeave a comment

I hit the office floor hard today. I gotta say it just was not pleasant. I had to keep the door open with a fan blowing out and it was only about 15 F all day so it was not exactly warm crawling around on the floor sanding. I had the paint off yesterday so today it was just sanding down the rough spots and getting it close to normal. It took me most of the day, then I vacuumed the floor with a broom like head. Then blew off the walls and floor with air, then swept then vacuumed the entire floor with just the vacuum hose, then swept again, then vacuumed one last time! It is now ready for stain. I plugged in two electric heaters and turned the heat pump back on. Tonight the temperature was 60 F. I will be able to put stain down at that temperature tomorrow.

The sheep are just not cooperating with this whole lambing concept. I was hoping since I was on staycation this week we could get all of the lambing done this week. It was a dream that was sorta possible. Instead when I went out this morning I found no new lambs and the mother that had twins, one of which she rejected, had a dead lamb in the pen. No idea why it died. So not only are we not having lambs but our productivity is dropping the longer we go. Plus it is cold outside! It was 5 degrees F this morning and no the lamb did not freeze, it was in the closed up barn and the pen it was in is the most central pen so it is not even near a wall. The triplets are in a corner pen with two outside walls and they did just fine! I had to break ice for the momma this morning.

Lamb Stats:

8-Lambs born

4-Ewes delivered babies

Lots-# of ewes still pregnant

1-Single lamb birth

2-Twin lamb births

1-Triplet lambs birth

1-Bummer lamb

1-Lamb died in first two weeks

6-Total lambs on farm

200% Birthing rate

150% Production rate

150% Survival rate at 2 weeks (Bummers count as dying as they would die without help)

On the plus side the chickens are laying eggs. We are getting 7-8 eggs from 12 hens every day now. This is great as we were not getting hardly any. So the lucky few are glad the hens starting back up again.

January 30, 2023Steve HardinLeave a comment

I am officially on staycation. My plan is to get the office floor done while I am off. If I can get that done then I can start loading stuff into the office! This will be amazing as we will be able to thin out the stuff in our bedroom. The floor is slow going. Getting those multiple layers of paint off of the floor was not easy. I am now going over the floor to get the sandpaper marks out of the floor. I won’t be able to get them all but I can knock down the number there are. I am hopeful I can get the floor all sanded tomorrow and then put some stain on the floor on Tuesday! The biggest problem on Monday will be getting the floor and walls clean of dust before I stain the floor. I will put the fan up in the doorway tomorrow. I have been using the vacuum and wearing an N95 while I have been sanding the floor. It’s pretty cold to keep the door open, 11 degrees F. I will dress warm tomorrow and just be cold. Once the floor is sanded I will use the high pressure air and try and blow all the dust out of the room. I am not sure how well that will work but it cannot hurt and if some goes out then it will be helpful.

I had a goal to get all of the paint off of the floor in the office. The real problem is its not very warm outside! I have been waiting until the thermostat gets to 20 F before going out to sand on the floor. When I open up the door and turn on the fan the heat goes right out of the building. I managed to get the paint removed and just started working on smoothing out the wooden floor. I will need to put everything away so I don’t have to work around any equipment.

I worked on a couple of little things this weekend that needed to happen. I fed the cows again. I love the big bales, just saying! I decided to see if the Kubota tractor could move the old lamb shed that got blown off its wooden supports. I was able to lift up a side and then manually move the beams on the ground. The 4×6 beams that make up the underside of the building need to be replaced. They are rotten. It also needs to be on concrete pillars at a minimum. Getting it back up onto the beams will keep the moisture from getting into the underside boards. This will buy me a few more years until I figure out what I am going to do with this building. I am unclear now. I was going to make a small chapel out of it but with the office now I am not sure Annmarie needs it. I will have to think about it. I do need a spot to store metal stock that is out of the weather. Maybe I use it for that? I don’t know.

The ewes are on strike. We have not had any born today and we are only getting one set of babies a day and have only had four ewes give birth in the last seven days. We expected the flood gates to open by now. We have two sets still in the pens. The single will go into the momma baby area tomorrow. I moved the triplets to the biggest pen today. We thought they could go out into the momma baby area but one of the triplets is very small. We are not sure it can get in and out of the barn by itself. So until it is big enough to get around easily they will have to stay in a pen.

Lamb update:

8-Lambs born

4-Ewes delivered babies

Lots-# of ewes still pregnant

1-Single Lamb birth

2-Twin Lamb births

1-Triplet lamb births

1-Bummer lamb
0-Lambs died in first 2 weeks

7-Total lambs on farm

200% Birthing rate

175% Production rate

200% Survival rate at birth

175% Survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count here as they would die without help)