lambs

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%

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.

Lambing has begun!

Steve HardinLeave a comment

We knew the sheep were due to have lambs very soon so we started to lock them up at night four days ago. This morning we had our first set of twins! The Gingerman and daughter went out to check on the sheep and discovered the pair. They went into a jug and were fed and watered. Sarah asked me about feed for the momma. We usually supplement their hay with some grain or sheep feed to increase the number of calories the nursing mommas are getting. I didn’t have any out in the barn. So I added it to my list of items to get accomplished today. The Gingerman had brought down another six bags of garbanzo beans so I decided to grind up a few bags to feed to the mothers. I brought the tractor around with a few old protein lick tubs and proceeded to mix feed as it went into the grinder.

I only had one stoppage while grinding this time. I think one of the wires is loose in the on/off switch but I managed to get it going again without tearing it apart. I ground about 200# of feed for the sheep. I have two full metal trash cans of feed already ground for the chickens and at this point I need to get some more metal 55 gallon drums to store feed in the chicken coop. I will need to start moving the cracked seed out into the barn into the large metal feed container. It will hold over 1000#. At this point I am still pretty focused on the bathroom so I will only be cracking grain when I need it for the sheep. I am hopeful this cracked batch will get us to the weekend. The grain containers don’t have covers but I am hoping the raccoon will leave it alone. We will see.

I went into the barn and set up the momma/baby area. Put out feed, opened up the side fence so they can get to water. I put a brand new protein lick tubs outside and pulled a panel over the gate so that no one can get out. We are now ready for the mommas/babies when they are bumped out of the jugs and into their own area.

The sheep snuck by the tractor when I was grinding grain so I had to battle them most of the time. I finally ended up opening up the gates so they could go up onto the back hillside. The grass is a couple of inches tall so they can get some fresh green grass into their diet. We are still filling all of the feeders in the barn also. We won’t stop that for a while. I am hopeful lambing season will go quickly. There were three rams in the pasture for breeding so we are hopeful they all tried to outcompete each other!

Bathroom day 29

Steve Hardin1 Comment

I have started to change how I am counting days on the bathroom remodel. I am now only counting the days when I work on the bathroom. Otherwise, the days I worked at the paying job would count against me. Now mind you, the project is going so well that I had to set up a portable shower in the mud room on Saturday night and on Sunday morning I had to make some modifications so it would drain correctly. Annmarie will now be able to take a shower whenever she wants which’s is typically at 0430. This is especially important since she is super busy during Lent. I was told that if I had started the project in January I would have gotten an extra month! I was not ready for it in January. At this point, I am not sure I really was ready for it at all.

Mr Rainman and I have been plugging away at it when I can get away from work. I was able to get home early one day last week but I had to go in at 0400 two other days to ensure I got all of my work completed. We have discovered that precutting most of the tile before we mix the All-set is the best way to get tiling done in a timely manner. I had measured and started to cut 76 tiles for the niche narrow walls but when we went to insert the niche it was discovered that I had not accounted for the metal trim and we needed to cut off another 1/4” of tile for them to fit. Mr Rainman cut tiles as fast as he could while I tried to get the shelf installed correctly. We managed to get one niche installed today. There are times the two of us bicker like old ladies. We cannot tell what the other one wants. Usually he cannot tell what I am saying. We get it figured out eventually.

Unfortunately, it is not all tile work. Mr Rainman went up and shut the gates to field 2 and fed the sheep this morning while I fixed the portable shower. He also took bodies to the boneyard. He did say that every rose bush all the way up to the triangle had a small covey of quail in it. They are starting to separate and find breeding partners. We have a lot of pheasants left over from the winter. If spring cooperates with the laying cycles then we will have a lot of game birds this fall. We also have isolated the sheep to the barn lot, ram pasture and area around the old chicken coop. They should start having lambs in the next 2-3 weeks and we want to be able to find them. Once they start birthing we will be locking them up in the barn at night. It makes it a whole lot easier to find and deal with the babies when they are all in the barn. We may need to make jugs next week in the barn so we are ready for the lambs.

Annmarie and I did a thing this week. We bought the other half of the farm from her aunt, Beverly on Thursday. It will take us about ten years to pay it off. We did the math and it will never make enough to pay itself off in our lifetime, it would take 30+ years to pay itself off. We bought it so the farm could eventually be put back together. This is something we have wanted to do for a long time and are fortunate to be able to afford it. Our only real focus on it will be to eradicate some star thistle. Eventually, we will need to repair some fencing.

The baby chickens keep trying to die. I have been having to go out every night and toss the chickens in the door. They keep getting locked out of the coop. I have had to toss in as many as 20 chickens a night. The last few nights the numbers have been steadily decreasing and they are mostly the babies. Tonight when I went out there were none outside! They had all made it inside before the auto chicken door closed. There is hope for them yet. I just need to see how many are hens and how many are roosters now. I should be able to tell in the next 1-2 months. I am going to keep one of the roosters.

Headed into 2025 with a shuffle

Steve HardinLeave a comment

The last of 2024 was painful. Our progeny brought home Covid for the holidays when the entire county is drowning in Influenza. I think I would have rather had the flu. We did manage to get Christmas dinner on the table with a lot of help and we did get to eat said dinner. Otherwise, we slept a lot and took a lot of over the counter medications for symptom control. The Gingerman was the healthiest of us all so he kept the animals fed and even managed to get both large burn piles lit over the course of a week, despite the downpour of intermittent rain we continue to receive.

I have been able to do a few small things around the house. I was able to get the entire driveway torn up and leveled this weekend. An inch of rain really helps soften up the road so I can tear up the top few inches and then drag it smooth. Ideally, it would dry out for a week or so and let the newly moved dirt settle but it just keeps raining. We have already gotten 1.2” of rain in 2025 and it is not even the first week of the year. Our snowpack is at record highs, over 150% so I sure hope that it does not warm up fast this spring or things will be messy. The back creek bed is over twice as wide as it used to be due to the last two floods we had. I am hoping this is enough to keep it contained. We have implemented a couple of other flood control and diversion ditches but none have been tried yet and honestly, I would like to just think that they will work as designed and not have them utilized. Sometimes, it is the thought that counts!

Our sheep are doing great! That fattening up they had in Nov & Dec is holding them over well. We are feeding 6-7 bales every night and they are maintaining weight. I have been feeding for over a month and this last Friday I spotted two raccoons in the barn. They were in the front hay room hiding in the walnut boards that are air drying. There is no way out so they had to stay there the entire time I was feeding. I of course did not have a gun as I have not been taking one out when I feed. It did occur to me to go back to the house and get one but every time I was away from the room for 30 seconds they kept trying to sneak out and I knew they would be gone by the time I got back. It never occurred to me to just call the wife and have her walk the pistol out to me, it was muddy, dark, raining and miserable outside. So now I carry my predator pistol and two clips out to the barn at night for feeding and of course have not seen a single raccoon. I thought we only had one out in the barn, they avoid all traps so shooting them seems to be the only way to get rid of them.

We are taking the last of the animals to slaughter this week. We are taking in eleven lambs for meat for new homes. I have one customer who is opting to do their own cut and wrap. This will be the last of the animals for sale until the lambs from this summer are ready around July 2025.

We have been ordering stuff and getting it ready for the bathroom remodel. We have decided to put in an overhead electric heater, so I am going to have to wire in a 220V service with a timer switch. A 220V timer switch is fairly industrial. So now the wife wants me to hide it in the custom built cabinet. She also wants me to wire in an outlet into the cabinet so that I can hide all of the electronics on one shelf in the cabinet. Both of these things are possible since I am building everything from scratch but it does tend to complicate things. This does not seem to be a consideration when detailing changes. It doesn’t help that I agree with her, having all of the electronics hidden will make for a cleaner, more organized bathroom with more countertop space. I need a 220V breaker, a tile drill bit and a new tile saw blade. I always start a new tile job with a new blade. I am sure I will need more stuff as I know the house is plumbed with Pex but I won’t know if its Pex A or B until I tear into the wall and can look at the connectors. I think it’s Pex B but not positive until I inspect the connectors. There is always something to throws things off. I am going to block off the hallway and set up the tile saw in the hallway after setting up plastic walls outside the bathroom. I will have to bring all of the tile inside and let it warm up to room temperatures before it can be installed. I already told Annmarie that our house is just going to be a construction zone for one month and there is nothing I can do about it.