lambing

Staycation day 10

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It is not really day 10 as I had to work on Monday but it’s close enough. The Gingerman spent Sunday with my daughter working on a creating a yard gate for my mother-in-law. He got it all up and attached with extra support inside garage so gate doesn’t sag. I have a welded horseshoe chain ready to go. I just need to meander down there and get it installed.

Mr Rainman came out on Monday and cleaned up a bunch of rotten wood and emptied some old decking out of the grain bin. It sounds easy but there was a lot of stuff and the spot he did it is looking amazing. We are going to empty the chicken coop first of all of the rough cut maple and black walnut that is stored out there. Next year we will take the black walnut from last year and get it stacked out there also. It’s waterproof and we will put stickers on the green stuff and just stack the other nice and tight. That will be a lot of weight to hold everything down. We will put wood stickers on the concrete so the wood has an air gap. This will free up a lot of space in the old chicken coop.

I plan on moving most of the tool storage from the old house out to the old chicken coop. Most of those tools and supplies are super specialized and I have them all sorted into separate bins. This way you can just grab a specific bin type for the needed job type. I only do tile work occasionally, same with painting supplies. I am also going to sort out most of my corded tools and give them away. They work just fine but I use battery powered almost exclusively now. It is so convenient when I am out and about on the farm. He also got the back drainage tank set up with a drain. This sits under the roof valley and catches the water and ice as it comes off our roof. We split the drain pipe in hopes that it would not freeze up this winter and crack.

I keep running to town every couple of days to get little things for the next project. I had to go and buy electrical conduit and wiring plus some miscellaneous wiring items. I figure that by the time I am completed there will be about $250 worth of electrical supplies just to get a double outlet of 110V out to the Gazebo. We want a string of lights around the inside of the gazebo. We have a set upstairs on the breeze porch that you can set the brightness on and I can wire in a timer if needed.

Today I worked on getting all of the conduit installed. I glued the main line together and pulled 130’ of 12g wire through it. I was able to install the wiring in the brick box I made last year. There is quite a bit of humidity inside the box so I used vulcanizing tape and electrical tape in alternating layers to keep the moisture out of the electrical connection. It takes a while to get it all taped up and it is pure misery to remove but it’s how we did it when I was in the Navy and it held out against salt water so I figure I should be good for a few years at a minimum.

I wanted the conduit in the Gazebo to be fairly hidden so I mounted it under area where the countertops are going to be installed. I had to loosen the gazebo anchoring bolts into the 6×6 boards to make enough room to jam the conduit behind the posts. This makes for a nice clean conduit run. I will need to anchor it all back in place tomorrow.

Snoop, ancient black alpaca, was whining at me over the weekend until I gave him an apple over the fence. The alpaca are incredibly noisy and if they want something they are more than capable of communicating that desire to you via a cacophony of altering sounds. I have been feeding the animals leftover apples for days now and still have 2-3 more days worth of apples to feed out. They were the rejects from my mother’s trees.

We still do not have any more lambs! It is the most bizarre thing ever. Yes there are still some pregnant, about 8-10. I checked on Little Dumper on Monday but the person in charge was not present and I was unable to get an update. I need that truck so we can get a bunch of rocks to put on the hillside to stabilize the gazebo downhill side bank.

Staycation Day 3

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It’s that time of the year again where I take the much needed Staycation. As always, this time of the year I will be working on getting ready for winter. This also means I will be attempting to finish up a few projects I have laying around.

Day 1 staycation :

Saw me going to town for half the day. I had to get the new diesel pickup titled in our name. I also washed the exterior of it and spent about thirty minutes at the car wash vacuuming out dog hair and leaves. I got some wipes to wipe down the interior but they are too wet. I need to take a roll of paper towels out when I use them to dry the plastic afterwards. I found a plastic tool holder area behind the back seat so I will be able to keep a few things I use on a regular basis back there. I bought four new tie downs and they will be stored in it. I may put a pair of gloves in it also plus a set of battery jumper cables. I also purchased a steering wheel cover and some new floor mats. I almost got some seat covers but I was not sure they would fit. I will do more research but I need to get a heavy duty set of inexpensive covers for the front and back seat. The seat covers will have to wait until after I get the steering fixed and the new shocks installed.

I attempted to buy hose clamps while I was in town and could not believe the price at $3/ea. I ended up ordering them online for $0.35/each and will wait the six days until they come. Yes, I had to order more than the 10 I needed but I usually end up using them for something. I just need the 1/2-3/4” size to fix the black poly pipe in the lavender. I accidentally cut it with the hedge trimmers a couple of weeks ago.

I was going to finish the window trim around the mud room window but did not want to drag out the table saw so I attempted to cut the board longwise with the radial arm saw. After the board exploded in my hand I decided that it was not a great idea. I need to find more wide boards then I will run them through the table saw first. I gave up on this and went and sharpened the chain saw and went out to the old chicken coop area and hacked on a tree. The tree keeps growing lower and lower so it needed to be raised back up so that we could see out past it and I could drive the tractor under it. I knocked all the limbs I wanted off of it and left the branches laying around so that the sheep could eat all the leaves off of the ground. The nice thing about early in the staycation I can just pick and choose from all the items on my to do list. As I start lining things off the list my choices shrink and I may be forced to do something I managed to avoid all summer.

Day 2 Staycation:

I went out and brought the first cow feeder back to the machine shop so I could repair it. Big surprise, I needed some grinder cutoff wheels and used them all up on the Gazebo so I had to make a quick run to town. I bought 12 so there would be extras in the toolbox. I managed to not buy any DeWalt tools despite it being the last day of the sale, buy one tool and get the battery free! I just bought two 20V off brand batteries last month that fit the DeWalt and I am going to try them out. They are more than 50% cheaper than the DeWalt Brand batteries.

I was able to weld the feeder together and take it back out to the orchard. It is all setup and one side spread open so that a large bale could be easily inserted and sides closed once we start feeding the big bales. I went up to the upper alley way and got the second feeder. It was in rougher shape and required more welding and grinding to repair. I even broke out some paint and painted over the rust spots and repairs. I tried to match paint colors but the green can nozzle was plugged so black paint works. Honestly, as long as the metal is protected I really don’t care what color combination is as long as paint covers the repairs.

Mr Gingerman helped me snag some rebar and put the now clean branches onto the burn pile behind the old chicken coop. We can now see field four and the gate from our front room window. We can break out the binoculars instead of hoofing it up there to see where the sheep are at.

Day 3 staycation:

I decided to weld up the tile house number that Annmarie made on the laser cutter. I looked in every building and her office and could not find it! I had even purchased the metal for the hanger last month. I finally gave up and measured the gazebo openings for angle iron to be mounted at the lip height so a countertop could be installed. I have been piling up scrap steel in the machine shed for just this purpose. I can get a 20” piece installed that will let me use three preexisting holes in the rim of the gazebo panel. It got two cut out and edges all ground smooth. I then took them to the gazebo, clamped them in place then marked the three holes. I drilled pilot holes in the vice then finished the holes. Once I had the two outer bolts in place I realized that my center bolt is about 1/2 “ too short so I will need to buy four more bolts to get those installed correctly.

Did not manage to get outside until the early afternoon. I went out and took down the gazebo door and tried to figure out while it will not shut. I ended up beating on it with a hammer and bending parts of it with a crescent wrench. After a couple of attempts I realized that I needed a new three inch bolt that was threaded 100% of the shaft. I don’t have any so I added that to my go to town eventually list. The bolt is for the door latch so it is fairly important to have it in place before I hang the door back up.

I asked Annmarie where the house number was located. It was in her office in the windowsill behind the barn door! No wonder I could not find it. We had it there for safekeeping. It was definitely safe from me. I ended up cleaning up all the tools and calf table away from the corral loading chute. I will need to back the stock trailer up to the chute this week so that I can get the three cows loaded up Friday morning to go to slaughter. They are going to kill three this Friday and two next Friday. The sheep are not getting killed until the first of the year.

Our momma sheep are getting skinny again. The lambs are literally sucking the calories out of them. I put a protein lick out for them and tomorrow I will get some creep feed for the lambs. Feeding the lambs separately a high protein diet should relieve some caloric load from the ewes. Annmarie has a friend that agreed to take all the sheep for a month to clean up a boggy area on their property that is a little water logged. They don’t want cattle on it. It is a hay field that was too wet to get a third cutting on it. This is perfect for us.

Summer 2024 Lamb Productivity

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Well summer lambing started on August 15 2024. In the last 18 days we have had 12 ewes give birth. It has not gone smoothly, as it is summer. Surprisingly, having lambs in the dead of winter is easier. The sheep are all in the barn and tend to deliver in the middle of the night almost without fail. We can then catch them, put them in jugs and leave them to bond for 2-3 days. This is not possible in the summer. For one, they don’t always give birth at night, about 30% of the lambs have been born during the day. The lambs are pretty dang spry by the time we get out there to put everyone in for the night. Which means you cannot always catch them. The space we put them in is very large compared to the amount of space they have in the barn. They are just dumber in the summer.

The stats are not very good but they are the facts so here they are:

  • Date of update- Sept 3 2024
  • # of Lambs born – 16
  • # of ewes who have delivered babies – 12
  • # of ewes still pregnant – No clue, I think between 23-33 but I am guessing
  • # of single lamb births – 8
  • # of twin lamb births – 4
  • # of triplet lamb births – 0
  • # tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-none yet
  • # tagged female lambs- none yet
  • # of bummer lambs – 1
  • # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 3
  • Total # of lambs on farm -12
  • % birthing rate- 133%
  • % production rate -100%
  • % survival rate at birth – 100%
  • % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 75%

Mr Rainman finished digging out the barn today. I put straw in the momma/baby area and opened it up so the sheep could go into that little area of the barn. They can shelter in the barn or over in the lamb shed. For the most part they sneak in with the horse, help her eat her hay and let her watch their babies. She likes the lambs and is very careful with them.

We went to take a couple of dead lambs up to the boneyard Monday morning and they were gone! Annmarie had us out at bedtime looking for coyotes as she could hear them. They were up in field one at the far end of the property. They came all the way down to the barn lot but did not get into the actual barn lot. The corpses were outside the barn lot. We, of course, have not seen a coyote in weeks. We have not lost a sheep that we know of yet this year. There is a skeleton in the orchard but it’s down in a hole and it was all bones. Mr Rainman swears it is new. We had so many deaths last year I am not sure we found them all. So I am not counting it as a loss for this year. We only kept the rams in with the ewes for 8 weeks so we should only have six weeks of lambing left!

Gazebo is Going to Happen

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Mr Rainman came out two days this week and filled the six holes with concrete and a steel 6×6 post anchor. We spent a couple of hours on Friday getting the next three panels up on the gazebo. Annmarie and I have had ten plus discussions on how the gazebo should be assembled. Every time I think I have the design down I am learning that that is incorrect. We “discussed” it again yesterday and I have seen the vision. So this weekend I will be working on getting the posts installed so that the next row can be installed. I am sure I understand now, I will let you know in a couple of weeks. I need to swing by the scrap metal yard next week to have them keep an eye out for a new roof cap. I am missing the vent cap for the gazebo.

We were supposed to work on the gazebo all morning but I needed to empty out part of the old lamb shed so that panels could be installed so the mommas/babies had a place to get out of the weather/sun. We had to move a bunch of round and square bales out of the way first. The square bales kept trying to fall apart. Once we had the area cleaned out we installed some temporary horse panels. I was able to get one of the old wooden jugs cleaned out and ready in case we need it. There is a metal gate in front of the entrance because I had hit the overhead rail with the tractor roll bar a couple of years ago denting it so that the gate could not be closed. In a moment of brilliance I thought we could just get the gate working in a fifteen minutes. Two hours later we had managed to take down the entire rail system and door in pieces. It did not want to come down easily. Once we had it down it amounts to a lot more work to get it back up and operational. The header board needs replaced outside, and a second board installed inside so that real bolts can be used instead of large wood lag bolts. I need to buy two different sizes of bolts as they used two different hole sized holders. Plus, I need new rollers, these are so shot that they are bouncing around the inside of each wheel and can move around an inch. Which is why it’s so hard to shut the door. This is going to have to be a later project.

We have been watching “Baa Baa” the ewe we took back as her family is moving away. We left her collar on so she is easy to spot in the herd. She is still overweight but is looking better after a few months grazing on sparse feed and running all over the farm. She is still very friendly.

We have had four ewes give birth, two sets of twins and two singles. We had to bummer off one of the white twins two nights ago. It refused to get up and was limp. We brought it inside, warmed it up and fed it and then gave it to Tisha to raise. If it’s going to make it she is the reason. Unfortunately, when we went out to bring the sheep in last night and look for babies that same mother was standing by the spring hollering. The other baby had jumped into the water and got stuck in the mud and drowned. We are not going to ding her for this loss. We have closed off this alleyway so the sheep cannot get to this area. The main barn lot has 2-3” gravel in the base of the ditch so that it can be driven through. This makes the water only about 1-2” deep and the lambs are safe. Those other twins have been over there more than ten days without any complications. Lambs always find a way to die. I have some leftover large gravel and will be hardening the edge of the water line with it. The lambs won’t go out into the deep water. Every year something comes up. The ditch is lined with concrete blocks behind the barn so there is no mud to contend with for the lambs. The mud build up comes and goes in certain areas and not always the same areas of the ditch.

Lambing continues slowly

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Moonlight barn picture, phone picks up a lot of light!

The sheep are kind of having babies at a glacial pace. We have had one more single born since the twins last week. We have moved the sheep to the upper fields now and it makes it a lot easier to check on them. We can just hop on the tractor and drive up the fields all the way to the end. This is not even a slight possibility on the lower property due to the creek and fences separating the fields. I spotted the new mom when I was bringing in the sheep one night. The baby had just been born and was still warm and wet and messy. I grabbed the baby and used it like a lure to get the mother to follow me into the barn lot where we are keeping the mommas and babies.

Lamb productivity is easy currently. one set of twins, one single born to two mothers = 150%.

The child and her now official Beau are bringing us apples that have fallen off their fruit trees and we are feeding them to the sheep at night. Every evening I toss out a bunch so when the sheep come in at night they are rewarded. It is starting to pay off, the sheep are coming in 2-3 times a day to check for apples. This makes it much easier to put them in at night if they are voluntarily coming in. There a bunch of ewes that look like they are going to pop any time and several that have full udders already. We are hoping they get with the program and pop them out soon.

No one is related

I needed to match a cow/calf pair as we are selling one this fall. I spotted two cows and two calves off by themselves so figured I would get some tag numbers so it would make it easier to sell them. I was headed down to clean up field one of the old hay bales that had not gotten removed. I drove up to the cows and the calves jumped up and ignored the cows that were right there. They started to run down the fence line and all of a sudden the cows that were 75 yards away started hollering and running at the fence line. Turns out the adult cows were just baby sitters and not the actual mothers. I was able to get a picture of the mother cow with calve #24. This same person wants a pregnant cow also. So Mr Rainman and I sorted cows today.

Sorting cows never goes smoothly. I know this and yet I seem surprised when we are running the cows for a solid hour on the back hillside because the cows refuse to go down through the gate that is in the middle of the hillside. It took us two hours to push the cows into the corral and sort off two, a female cow and an eater for this year. The same person that wants a cow/calf pair wants an eater so we are hoping that by putting the eater in with the family pairs it will learn to be calm. Running with the teenagers all summer has not made any of the cows calm. We had two of them leap the fence. The fence on the hillside that we had just tightened and reinforced! They jumped it without even hitting a strand of wire. We are just going to leave them for now. They will stay outside the fence with the mommas/babies and knock down some of that tall grass. They won’t run away with the cows on the other side of the fence.