lambs

It has begun!

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I am officially on vacation now! I am going no where. It’s a very affordable place, I hear great reviews about it. I will be spending my vacation tiling the downstairs of our house. I have limited it to the hallway, living room and dining room. If we can tear it up and make incredible progress then we will do the kitchen also. The kitchen is going to be painful as we actually have to remove one layer of subfloor and linoleum and work around the cupboards.

There are two of us, I have a helper, we will call him Mr. Experience. This is a novel experience for me as most of my help is fairly naive if not downright virginal when it comes to hands on work. Mr Experience has done construction for a long time and specifically tile and concrete work. This is an amazing change for me. I am not near as stressed doing this project. He is doing all the measuring and cutting of hardiboard and I am doing all the grunt work and screwing in the thousands of screws needed to attach the board to our existing floor.

Day 1 was spent clearing out the downstairs. We used the kitchen, the downstairs library, upstairs spare bedroom and our bedroom to stash all the furniture. The kitchen had to store the couch and the old safe as neither could go upstairs or into the downstairs library. You cannot even get past the door frame into the spare bedroom. It is jammed full of everything. The dogs do not get any more toys! We are officially in a dog toy buying drought. We must of found 30+ toys trapped under the couch and loveseat. I am seriously considering building a square frame that hides under the couch and loveseat that prevents any toy from rolling more than 6 inches under the furniture. It was amazing how many toys were trapped in hidden realms. We left the dining room table but could stash it in the kitchen when we need to as Annmarie is in Berkeley for school for a week. There will never be a better time than now to jam everything into the kitchen. I just need to be able to get to the fridge, stove and microwave. Access to the sink is crucial as that is where water for the coffee maker comes from! I have to keep up a steady stream of coffee to survive. The second half of the day was spent driving to the Big Box hardware store for the needed supplies.

This note about my chickens was on the fridge when I got back. It seems the housekeeper was looking out the window as our younger border collie was barking at the tree. She looked up into the tree just in time to see the eagle swoop down and go for my chickens! Luckily, the chickens had been warned and were scattering when the eagle dive bombed them. It tried for them one more time. “Everything loves chicken”! We may have to put a mesh cover over the chicken yard. I was told they may be nesting in the upper prime field in the top of the trees. We will see, I have not noticed a nest up there recently, but honestly, I have not been looking for an eagle nest.

Day 2 was spent cutting subfloor to fill in the gaps and level off the floor so we could lay Hardiboard down. I love Hardiboard for all tile underlayment except for in bathrooms. I will always use Wonderboard when it calls for a wet enclosure. We did get a few pieces of underlayment laid and screwed down. This is really confusing the dogs as they are unsure where to lay or sleep.

Day 3 is today, we laid more subfloor. The only room left to install subfloor in is the dining room. We also floated in all the subfloor that had mismatched heights so we have a solid base to install the Hardiboard onto. This is very nice and we are cutting the seams to utilize full sheets and move the joints away from high traffic regions. It is amazing how much stiffer and firmer the floor is with just a new subfloor. We called it an early day so Mr Experience could do other things and I do recognize that other people do have lives. I would kill it until 2300 every night if I could. But with Annmarie back in school and back teaching I have to do the morning and evening chores so my remodel time gets interrupted. I become totally focused and obsessed with finishing the project. It makes her crazy but the project is getting completed so she tries to limit her feedback. The goal is to start laying tile tomorrow by early afternoon.

2018 started with a clean slate

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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.

Help is always welcome

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Three years ago my little sister, Chris came home to visit for the holidays and we had her out to the house. This year she came home for a White Christmas! A fairly spectacular one at that and she came out on Saturday to see the baby sheep. We always take the opportunity to tag and band when people come out to visit the lambs. This necessitates someone holding the smallest lambs after we catch them. Annmarie does all the catching as I am the designated tagger and bander. I am the Bander, controller of the Banderator, the rubber miracle delivery device. It has four little prongs that when you squeeze the handle it spreads the prongs apart creating an opening in the center of the very small rubber band. I use two rubber bands always now after a previous early learning experience where we ended up with several rams. The real problem is it does take some hand strength to stretch the rubber bands and to put the tag through their ears. You have to miss the blood vessel running down the middle of their ear. There are times I have a sneaking suspicion that Annmarie could do it but this way she doesn’t have to inflict pain upon the lambies. Chris enjoyed holding and cuddling with the lambs. Even after years of doing this there is nothing quite like snagging 1-3 day old lamb and snuggling with it. It is a guaranteed stress reliever.

On our drive out to the farm we spotted a huge Bald Eagle soaring over the property. They are beautiful birds and we usually see them once or twice a year passing through. I casually mentioned to Annmarie that I would not mind them sticking around. She then reminded me of Rule #2 to live by “Everything loves Chicken!”. This could cause me problems so I am currently torn over this dream. I wanted peacocks but they are loud and scream “help me” in a woman’s voice at the most inopportune time, so now I want Bald Eagles.

I had to go down and feed the cows a new bale and found a dead calf. Now I had just been down with the cows three days prior and had seen no calf. This one looks like it was still born. I tossed it in into the tractor bucket and then drove to the barn and got the two deceased lambs that had been on deep chill in the snow before it melted the day before. I drove them all up to the boneyard and found that there was a 10 foot cleared circle beaten down into the ground where the ram parts had been. There was not a single body part left of that ram! Were it not for the beaten down circle I never would have known where I tossed his carcass a week prior. We have not seen a single coyote. We hear them all the time but none have come within sight of the house in months. Its not safe for them and they know it. Santa brought me a coyote call in my stocking. I need to try it out. Chris spent some time spoiling our Border Collies and trying to get Gizmo to like her. She did make progress on the Gizmo front. He is not super people friendly. She made better progress with the collies!

As the world turns

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As always something comes up, whether you want it to or not. I was reminded yesterday that the cows probably needed food as they had tipped over the feeder. Usually I can get 1-2 days after the feeder gets tipped over as they are just trying to get to the stuff below the solid panels. But with all the snow on the ground I felt sorry for them so I opted to feed them early. I had been charging my car battery in the hopes that it not starting was just a fluke. So I walked out to the machine shed to start up the tractor with the dogs in tow. The dogs are a necessity as the cows will bum rush the large hay bale as I attempt to push it into the field. I jumped onto the tractor, put my hearing protection ear muffs on and turned that key expecting it to start. I was disappointed. It did nothing but light up a couple of lights, no tick, no noise whatsoever. Luckily, we spent $2500 last year to get a single 110v outlet and light out to the machine shop!

So I grabbed the charger from the car and put it on the tractor. I then had to unload the propane tank and all season tires from Annmarie’s car out of the back of the pickup so I could use it to haul hay. We still have some 100# bales of alfalfa in the machine shop so I loaded up six bales and drove them out into the pasture and tossed them into the feeder. The nice thing about a moveable feeder is I move it every time I feed otherwise the cows create a mud pit. We are still feeding at the far end of the field away from the houses also. In the spring I want to drag a set of discs all around the field and spread out all the leftover hay and cow poop, maybe I can get it to mulch in.

The horse’s hooves needed cleaning out as it looked like they were walking on ice bubbles. It takes some effort to get those broken up enough to scrape them off the hooves.

My chickens are causing me grief again. I thought I was down six hens due to the raccoon and then this week number 19 magically appeared in the coop one night when I was counting them. I had been spotting this random hen out in the barn before the snow came down. Annmarie spotted it yesterday in the barn. We have no idea where it is roosting in the barn but it is not returning to the coop at night. It is just wandering the barn digging through the sheep and horse poop as content as can be. Tonight when we went out to do chores it was digging through horse poop and we caught it. It is now living with its comrades in the coop. This is chicken number 20! So the raccoon can only be credited with killing four hens now.

Annmarie called me today to say that when she went out to feed in the morning that the twin miniature babies were ice cold. They were totally limp and not very responsive. I asked if their new mom had abandoned them but she said they were curled up against mom. All we can figure is that she is not producing enough milk for the babies and they are unable to get enough calories to stay warm. She called to ask if I would come tube feed them. We have never had to do it before but you just insert a tube into their stomach and give the formula in with a syringe. I told her they were most likely not going to make it and just try her best. She put them by the gas stove and fed them every 5-10 minutes little dribbles until they got warm and strong. They were both sitting up and looking around 6 hours later! We gave them to the housekeeper. She now has 9 bummers from us! Its crazy how many problems we have had this year. Including the two that have died that’s 11 sheep we have lost out on for a cost of $770. We still have at least 10 ewes that need to give birth still. They are all our older more experienced ewes. We figure they avoided the ram the longest. My sister is visiting family this week and is coming out on Saturday. We will tag and band all the babies again to get caught up. To know if the baby has been tagged or banded you just look for the floppy lowered left ear. The ear tags weigh down their ears for the first couple of weeks. Its easier to spot the low ear than the actual tag from across the barn.

On the plus side, I did not have to go fishing for a retained placenta in one of the ewes tonight. She had passed it today on the second day. I have a pack of 100 shoulder length gloves that I have only used 5 out of in the last 5 years. I am hoping to continue the streak of infrequent utilization.

Barn demise

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Annmarie is still not 100% but on the mend. This means I am still on chore duties until she gets better. I opted to start the day with oatmeal, toast and coffee. I am never in a hurry in the morning so I was prompted to speed up and get outside. I had shut the wooden chicken coop door last night as it was still a little light out when I got eggs. The finches were inside the coop, there must have been around 12 of them freeloading on the chicken feed and I did not want them coming back in or the chickens leaving. The raccoon has killed 5 chickens so far as they are too stupid to go behind the locked door when it gets dark. So I let the chickens out first then headed to the barn. Well there were three new babies in the barn and they looked like triplets as only one momma was paying attention to them. I ignored them and opened up the barn doors so the sheep could go outside and get a drink of water. Next I went to check on the momma with twins I put in the stairway area. Only one baby present, I had to dig around in the straw to find the little demised fellow. I went to the slider door to let the momma’s out and found another dead lamb trapped down next to the door! It had fallen down into the 3-4 inch gap and was on its back and could not get out. So both the carcasses went out by the gate and will be taken up to the boneyard soon. They will be well preserved in the snow until after the holidays. I fed the mommas and looked out into the barn and there were now three ewes with 5 babies and one huge orange baby covered in slime who keeps hollering and walking around. No one will claim the baby and after two hours I had to take the baby inside and dry it off so Annmarie could feed it and get it warm. Another bummer for the housekeeper, her 7th one this year and so far they have all survived. I tagged and banded all the babies before coming inside with the bummer. I wanted to give her a chance to bond and I needed to empty out the baby area and start over.

I went and got tools so I could do the two essential repairs to the barn. The first one was to dig out the straw and install a low board below the new feeders so a lamb could not slide under the feeder and get trapped. This went fairly smooth.

Next was to fix the gap problem at the sliding door. The opening is 3-4 inches wide as my 3 inch wide tape measure is buried in the deep end of the door. I had to do some digging to find a couple of scrap pieces of wood that would work, amazingly it was tongue and groove flooring and the tongue was intact and visible. I was able to find a piece of leftover tongue and groove flooring unfortunately the barn is crooked so I beat it into place and see a diagonal line across it. On one end I trimmed off almost two inches and down to nothing at the opposite end. I screwed in two boards to fill in the bottom support then cut my floor board on the table saw so I could make it fit.

Here it is with less than a one inch gap between the door and the floor. I even placed a 2×4 outside to keep the door from kicking away from the floor creating another gap. It looks kinda funny as this wood is perfectly clean but that won’t last.

While I was working on the barn Annmarie texted me to tell me there was a ewe with twins out in the snow. I told her no there was not as I had gotten everyone in and fed an hour earlier. I looked while we were on the phone and yes she was right, twins covered in snow with momma trying to lick them clean. I chased all the ewes back into the barn then swung a gate panel to create an opening into the momma and baby area. The brand new moms from today are in this enclosure. They all did well.

I had to go out late tonight to lock everyone in as its Christmas Eve and that same ewe had both her twins out in the snow. They had frozen snow every their entire body. I chased the ewes inside and tossed the babies after. She was already calling for them.