Mr Rainman – Page 4 – Stewart Creek Somethings

Lambing final tally

May 11, 2025May 11, 2025Steve HardinLeave a comment

This weekend some time had to be devoted to the sheep. It was time to worm everyone. We have to wait until the lambs are old enough to do it and no one else is going to give birth. So we ran them all into the barn and proceeded to run them out through the chute system. Mr Rainman did the snagging and holding while I used the oral drenching kit to just pump some wormer down into the back of their throat. This thing works so much better than drawing up syringes. We also knocked V shapes into the ewes we are going to cull after the lambs are weaned. We marked nine ewes for culling. When we go to pull those nine off of the herd in July we will cull anyone else who is not fat. They will have had access to all you can eat green grass and their bodies should have been able to put the weight back on by then. We already have some ewes getting fat on the green grass. We want to cull hard this year so lambing next January will be easy on everyone.

Mr. Rainman found a two week lamb that was weak and being ignored. We ended up taking care of it for 24 hours as our normal go to person was out of town. We managed to keep it alive despite it not really wanting to eat. It is now with it’s forever home and if it is gonna make it will be there.

The barn got put together, we tore down all the jugs and hung the panels on the walls, put up all of the buckets and feeders. When we go to clean out the barn we will just need to take the feeders out.

We also got the alpaca shearing area all cleaned up and ready to shear. Hopefully, we can shear the alpaca in the next week. They just need to be dry, it rained off and on all day today. We got 1/3” of rain and it was needed. The garden and grass fields needed it. The parts I ordered for the new pump are still not here. I am afraid the tariffs and shipping issues may have delayed its arrival. Hopefully, it gets here in the next two weeks.

Date of update- May 11, 2025
# of Lambs born – 73
# of ewes who have delivered babies – 42
# of ewes still pregnant – should be ZERO, but I saw one today that was so fat already. It would have to be an immaculate conception or a through the fence encounter.
# of single lamb births – 13
# of twin lamb births – 27
# of triplet lamb births – 2
# tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-35
# tagged female lambs-30
# of bummer lambs – 3
# of lambs who died in first two weeks – 6
Total # of lambs on farm -63
% birthing rate- 174%
% production rate -150%
% survival rate at birth – 100%
% survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 86%

Spring is here

April 14, 2025Steve HardinLeave a comment

This is where it gets tricky. Spring is here and there are things to do outside yet our main bathroom remodel is still in progress. I have to stay focused on the bathroom but some projects still have to get done.

The pears and plums are in full bloom but we have had two nights of hard freeze so I am not sure that we will get any fruit! I sure hope we do this year.

I am mowing the lawn with the sheep again this year so Mr Rainman moved our chive planters to the back garden for a week so the sheep don’t scalp them. They tried to eat the roots last year they liked it so much. Unfortunately, our little dog Milo has learned that he likes to chase the sheep. It is cool. Our side fence is not a barrier for our little dog, he squeezes around the end and our border collie just jumps the fence. We tried locking them in the orchard but then both got into the lavender patch and then got into the garden area. The fences don’t seem to be much of a deterrent or barrier. So on Sunday the Gingerman helped me install the side fence. We made it very tall and the dogs are now contained in the garden area. It works great.

Mr Rainman has been spraying 2-4-D and Milestone on the bottoms. He has already managed to spray fields 1-3 and will work on the schoolhouse bottoms tomorrow. He is also going to spray the edges of the CRP ground we just purchased. The weeds are starting to creep in on the edges, so we are going to spot spray and see if we cannot get them stopped. We will also kill a little spot alongside the fences so the weeds don’t choke out the fences. It is way safer than trying to burn the fence lines later in the year.

I had to add a small 1”x2” board on the end of the shelf in the mud room that is over the outside door. Opening and closing the door is causing the items to move closer to the edge and then leap off to their potential death. The board is installed and now you do not have to wonder if something is going to fall on your head when you use the back door.

Annmarie and I have made a list of all current projects and it has ten levels of priority. This actually works nicely as it lets me plan out projects better and if I have a project I want I can add it to the list. Finish the bathroom is priority 1!

Bathroom day 39

April 14, 2025Steve HardinLeave a comment

The bathroom project is moving forward, it might not seem like it but it continues to grind on. I just have to keep at it and not quit until it gets done. I have 39 days into actually working on the bathroom. It has been 10 weeks since I started the project!

Mr Rainman was able to rub on some Tried & True finish onto the blue pine and it really made it snap. I started on the ceiling one evening and after 1.5 hours realized that I had done it wrong, I had made a gap on the side when one was only needed for the ends. I had to take it all down and do it correctly the second time. This is just the main panels, I will need to get the crown molding on next to marry the ceiling and walls. The crown molding is going to be hard as I will need to be able to drive a nail into the shower grout. I have some diamond drill bits and I think I am going to have to predrill a hole. It will not be fun.

Once I had the ceiling panels in I installed the bathroom light. Of course, when looking at the light I did not check to see what kind of lightbulb it actually uses. It turns out to be some LED with a G9 base. I was only able to find two of them in Pendleton so I ended up ordering more on the internet. It is a little dark in the bathroom, I may end up having to order a brighter light bulb. It may take some trial and error to get the amount of light tuned in. I do really like the light design and the cut glass makes some interesting patterns on the metal ceiling tiles.

We had purchased some slate outlet covers but it turns out, that for some unknown reason, we did not order enough. So I installed the ones we had and ordered three more.

The wife pointed out that I had installed the light switch upside down and then pointed out that the medicine cabinet pull was upside down. I had installed the entire cabinet upside down. I just turned the light switch 180 degrees and it was perfect. The cabinet I just removed the handle and turned it 180 degrees! It is perfect.

I was going to put a shim//toilet extender on to get the outlet even with the tile but they were all very cheap and did not fit the old hole pattern. I opted to get an extra thick wax seal and see if it would work. I had Annmarie help direct the toilet while I moved it into place. I was happy to have to push it down about 1/4” to get the wax to spread out. I promptly filled the toilet bowl with water to stop the smell from coming into the house. I also managed to get three valves while at the hardware store. I will work on installing those next but they require me to shut off the water to the house and drain the lines. I also forgot to buy the decorative wall plates so those will still be needed. So the toilet does not work.

I will get all the crown molding installed before we bring in the bathroom vanity. It will be too crowded to move a ladder around with the vanity in place. The old door will work but I need to glue in a patch first and that is going to take me about an hour to custom cut the fill piece and clean out the hole. It needs to happen also, but I figure until we have a functional toilet I have some leeway.

Lambing coming to a close soon

April 13, 2025April 13, 2025Steve 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

March 30, 2025Steve 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.