predators

Border Terrier logic

Steve HardinLeave a comment

We have a 16 month old border terrier. Annmarie has been working with him and takes him to the hospital to become a therapy dog. He loves everyone and will let anyone pet him. He does not get ruffled, riding elevator, around walkers, canes, wheelchairs, noisy IV pumps, emotional families, emotional patients. He is pretty much a loving rock.

At home he has decided that the yard is his space. We have barn cats that sneak down to eat the porch kitty food and he tends to harass them at bedtime because they are not supposed to be there. Last week we let the dogs outside at bedtime and told them it was bedtime potties. Milo ran around the yard and next thing we know he is barking up a storm. I knocked on the side window to get him to quit barking, it did nothing. I went and opened the small window in the laundry room and hollered at him, no response or let up on the noise. Then he starts doing this weird baying sound and is fighting with something outside the back door.

I grab the spotlight and my pistol and just step out the back door looking for the cat. Milo has a full size raccoon trapped on the cat food ledge and every time it tries to get off the ledge on the front side, Milo drives it back. I call him off and he comes right to me. The raccoon is promptly dispatched. I have friends who say I should live trap and move them. The problem is that everyone else in town live traps them and turns them loose at the edge of our property so there is an endless supply of raccoons (i.e “chicken killers”). I figured out that since we have moved back home I have had over 300 chickens killed by raccoons. A chicken won’t even lay an egg until it’s over 6 months old. That is a time and money commitment. I don’t have any sympathy for the raccoons anymore.

This week our heat pump went out on Sunday night so we ended up sleeping downstairs. It was 2 degrees cooler downstairs than upstairs. Annmarie let Milo outside around Midnight because he woke her up. Normally he sleeps through the entire night upstairs with us. Around 0130 he starts raising a ruckus. I wake up to Annmarie hollering my name and hollering at our big dog to get inside. The border collie keeps trying to run upstairs because she knows if I am running outside in the middle of the night I am armed. I grabbed the spotlight and my pistol and run out onto the front porch. Milo is hollering, growling and some other creature is hollering. I get to the front porch and I can tell that they are down in the water in the ditch under the crossing board. I think Milo has another raccoon pinned into the corner and he is just waiting for me to show up. I get across the hillside and Milo has another raccoon by the throat in the water and mud and is not letting go. I call him off and he just lets go and moves six feet away. The raccoon is dispatched but when I went to take Milo inside the house he is absolutely filthy. In his need to dominate he failed to take into account his surroundings, he was covered in mud and water. He had to sleep on the back porch and then get a shower the next day before he could go back to work.

We are pretty sure no one at work believes us. He is the calmest gentlest dog when he is there. Now every night when we let him out for his bedtime routine he runs the entire length of the fence patrolling to make sure that no raccoon has encroached.

Predators 2/ Farm 1

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well the coyotes are back, we have lost two lambs over the course of the last three weeks. For a while we could not spot them but now they are frequently visible and unfortunately very far away. Four of us have shot at them, some of us repeatedly and so far all we are doing is scaring them to run off. I realize that harassment is a valid tool for getting them to leave the sheep alone it is just not very final. If you don’t keep up the pressure than the predators just come back and start eating more animals.

I have been working on getting the tall fields with cheat grass in them mowed down so there are fewer places to hide for the coyotes. I am making pretty good progress but fields #3 & 4, still need a lot of mowing done. I carried a rifle for two straight days while I was mowing and only spotted one coyote. I missed repeatedly. I could use some practice but at the rate I am shooting at the coyotes I will be getting things dialed in soon.

We have not lost a lamb in the last two weeks. I go on patrol around the entire outside of the farm then drive two sides of the CRP looking for coyotes every couple of days. There is a path on the edge of the CRP now that I mowed in a couple of weeks ago. We need to get the weeds under control in the CRP and the edges are where the weeds are creeping in. I mowed a couple of weeks ago and will spray it this week. We are going for a good kill on the star thistle. The stuff is very nasty.

Once I have the edges of the CRP sprayed then I will work on the hillside and the backside of the field #1. I mowed there on Friday and knocked it back down. This also gives us great visibility for when the coyotes are moving through the fields. Normally coyotes will crawl under a fence but Annmarie spotted one this morning that just leaped over the fence! That is cheating! She was making our bed and spotted it just ambling by on the back hillside.

The Gingerman heard her and leaped out of bed and ran outside with a rifle. It was gone. I am pretty sure that it was the one I shot at up in field #2. I got dressed and went out looking in the pickup right after that to no avail.

Predators 1/ Farm 1

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Well it is that time of year again when the predators decide to come out and play. We had a lamb killed up in field four by the old hand dug well. The lambs are 2-3 months old at this point but still easy pickings for a coyote. We had someone come out with thermals but they only killed one coyote. I have yet to see a coyote in the last three months. Mr Rainman spotted one in field four but did not have a rifle. He sat out watching the area after he grabbed one but the coyote never reappeared.

The cheat grass is horrible this year so we are going to have to push all of the animals down by the schoolhouse. The grass is much better down there. We have had one cow give birth and it is a cute little black calf. Everyone was so tame that Mr Rainman carried the calf across the water and no one cared. After about day four he could not catch the calf, it was too fast! We have five black cows and one brown one. The brown one was the calmest of the bunch we sold off. Now that we only have calm cows we need to get rid of the brown one, it’s too crazy. It is amazing how much your tolerance drops once you have gotten rid of the crazy ones. Placid is perfect.

Needless to say with the coyotes making a reemergence we have started to carry a rifle around. Frank doesn’t seem to mind, he just wants to be fed his bottle. Unfortunately, we are weaning him so he only gets a bottle in the evening now. He is really not onboard with this plan. The lambs head butt the ewes udder to promote milk release. In other words when Frank is standing directly in front of you, pay attention or he will head butt you some place you don’t want and it will not feel good. He did still get his bottle so from his perspective it worked.

We pulled the bull off of the cows before we let them down by the schoolhouse. We still have seven teenagers running around down there and one of them is an unbred heifer. He does not like being separated and has been beating on the gates so we had to make a repair. I remembered why the gate had not been repaired before this, the gates were put on with the last of the hardware I had on hand. I used three different kinds of bolts/screws and they all have a different driver! It took us a half an hour to find all of the right tools and one of the anchor bolts had a custom pattern. We beat it out with a hammer and wrench. Hopefully, the old large bolts we installed will hold up better than the fancy new ones.

Farm 4, Predators 0

Steve HardinLeave a comment

This is a great start to 2025! So far this year the Gingerman has killed one raccoon from the in-law’s front porch, it was eating her cat food. I have managed to kill two out in the barn and just caught one in the live trap. I thought we had all of the raccoons out of the barn but yesterday when I was chasing the cows out of the barn I noticed a single set of raccoon paw prints leading up the hill from the spring to the underside of the barn. There is one more still living in the barn. They eat the cat food and make an incredible mess. They find a high spot and use it as the bathroom making huge piles of feces. Which I then later discover and often they are in a difficult spot to reach or require a lot of moving stuff out of the way. I have a pile on top of my drying wood in the barn and I believe there is another pile on top of old wood we stacked up in the barn over a pass through in one of the hay bays.

I really need to pull that wood out of the hay bay and look at it. I bet about 90% can be burnt and the rest moved into the granary for later use. I was more of a hoarder early on when it came to barn wood. I realize now that it is only usually good for picture frames. Especially, wood that has been out in the weather for over 120 years.

Yesterday, the Gingerman is leaving the house and spots a coyote out in the wheat stubble field. He calls the progeny and she tells me. It is running towards the old chicken coop and the bottoms so I just need to get out there with a gun. I had not replaced the ammunition on the stock holder and when I grabbed the gun I realized that all the bullets were just empty brass. I only had two bullets. I wanted to go upstairs to get more ammo but after cleaning off the scope (dusty from construction work) the women said I was taking too long. So I went outside with only two shots.

I hoofed it up to the far end of the barn lot (100 yards) and waited. I tried calling the Gingerman on his cell phone but he was in a dead spot and so was I. I kept scanning for movement, no coyote, but there were about seven rooster pheasants flying around at the beginning of field #3 and walking around the bottoms on the snow. I stood out there for 15 minutes and never saw the coyote. It ended up turning for the creek bed around the cliff corner above me and I would never have been able to see it unless I walked another 200 yards in the deep snow.

I will be adding bullets to the stock ammo holder as I usually need more than two shots. Annmarie and I have been talking about how to store weapons at the ready inside the house but have them better secured. We will be doing some more research. Leaving them all stacked by the door is probably not a great long term plan. It definitely is not keeping them clean and free of dust and dirt.

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.