The predators are gaining ground fast. We had another chicken killed the day after the first two. I have been going out at dark and again at 0200 armed with pistol and spotlight. I need more light than a flashlight, 400k lumens of brightness. I have not seen the raccoon since the first night I shot at it. Unfortunately, Mr Rainman and Gingerman have both spotted a raccoon but have been unable to get a shot off as they were unarmed. So everyone is starting to pack all of the time now so they can snag a predator.
Friday evening the Gingerman missed out on an opportunity to shoot at a coyote because he was unarmed. We had a cow die and he went up with the pallet forks mounted on the Kubota to remove it from the field and place it on the bone pile. It was one of our original heifers, so she was 15 years old. Unknown cause of death, but she had just been walking around earlier that morning. Luckily, Gingerman got to her before she popped. It has been very warm and they bloat up pretty fast and opening up that will make a very odiferous mess. I expect the vultures to show up in a couple of days. They fly up from the reservoir and can eat on that carcass for over a week. We might even get an eagle or two scavenging. The eagles will chase off the vultures, they chase off everything! No one wants to mess with a bird that is that big. We have not lost any sheep that we know of so far.
I did tear apart the John Deere driveline this week. I was convinced it was the U joints on the driveline. Surprisingly they made it really easy to remove. Pop the snap ring off, drive out the shearable pin then drive the shaft toward the back wheels. The back end slides along splines and then once the front is off you just drive the shaft off the rear splines. Nope, once the thing was off the U joints have zero slop in them. I think it is the rear spline attachment getting sloppy because the rubber guards have been missing and this allows grass to wrap around the U joints and drive shaft. I dug out all of the dirt in the rear cavity and installed both U joint guards, rubber sleeves. I need to order some more parts so I can fix it. I have started a new shopping list with each piece of equipment a category and then just list the part I need under that category. This way when I get around to ordering parts I don’t forget something.
Gingerman took out the radiator on the 1957 truck and is getting it repaired. Once it is repaired then we can drive the truck in to the brake shop and they can finish adjusting the brakes. The drums and pads will need to be inspected. Once that is done I will need to work on a 12 inch rail going around the truck bed to hold in the dirt and or rocks that we put in the dump bed. They have to be attached to the bed so when you engage the dump bed you don’t throw off the racks every time.
There tends to be an optimism that persists whenever you are talking about predator control. Maybe it’s hope, maybe it’s bragging rights but whatever it is it does happen. I have had to decrease the farm score this year as last night a raccoon killed two chickens. It was most likely the same raccoon I saw at 0200 when I took the puppy outside to potty. I was of course in a robe and slippers without any glasses on. No way it was a cat as it jumped out of the large wild rose bush and proceeded to run down the creek and under the fence and then down the creek. It was very noisy. I was ignoring it until Mr Rainman sent me pictures of two dead chickens today with a third one injured. If the stupid chickens would go inside the coop this would not happen.
So now I am going to have to go out, check on the chickens and then just stand around looking for frogs to see who can out wait whom. A classic game of prey vs predator.
Since the farm is ahead of the predators I decided I had better be proactive tonight and make sure all of the chickens went into the coop before the automatic chicken door closed. All of the chickens were inside and the only animal I spotted was the grey barn kitty down by the creek. I was standing by the coop looking into the back creek with my spotlight trying to find the noisy frog that I know was right in front of me when a damn raccoon jumped out of the bush next to the chicken coop. It was running over the overhead soon to be roof supports. I had my trusty suppressed 22 pistol and started flinging lead into the sky. I for sure hit it at least once if not twice. By the time I got around the coop and into the ram pasture it was running toward the barn. I am a firm believer in more lead matters, so I continued to fling it. I managed to get off nine rounds and had to search the barn. I was unable to find the raccoon in the barn. Annmarie thinks it is living over the tack room during the day.
Mr Rainman came out today and repaired the sickle mower for the Kubota tractor. Later he went out and finished cutting field one. I think there is about three acres left to process in that field. I really need to focus on repairing the u joints on the John Deere tractor tomorrow. I had to dig out some grass on the driveline on Sunday and the U joints are bad! I have all the parts to repair it but have not taken the time to actually do it.
We had to take a break today to unload the antiques we won at an auction. One of the local antique stores in Pendleton was having multiple clearance online auctions and today was pickup day. I had to make two trips with the pickup to get everything. Now I will need to wash and polish everything up. We are going to rearrange our living room and Annmarie’s office to fit the new furniture. We are actually going to get rid of three items and replace them with three new ones! I scrubbed the bronze book ends and small brass sculpture tonight. Plus, I managed to score some more old marbles!
The sheep never cooperate, we have been locking them up in the hopes that the babies would start popping out. Not a single one has had a baby since the first set of twins! The twins are super healthy and active so I don’t think she had them early. Mr Rainman came out yesterday and we spent two hours in the barn setting up jugs, alleyways and future expansion areas. We usually just set up a few jugs then expand as we need. The same is true as we move the large panels inside to change the overall space arrangement. The trouble with this is as the floor bedding gets deeper it is harder to move the panels. So we set up the entire thing, moved all of the heavy panels and are now ready for lambegeddon. We have eight jugs ready to go for newborn pairs and two future expansion areas for the mommas/lambs pairs. This was a much better plan than fighting with it later. We did run out of steel rods for the panels and had to use some rebar. It works but I should probably order another ten large steel pins. The changes we made last year with the creep feed area and setting up eight jugs takes a lot more pins. We did have enough panels, so the last few we purchased the previous year caught us up to where we need to be. We also have enough buckets and feeders finally. It seemed like we could never find a bucket when we needed it. We have plenty now, after hanging them in the jugs we still have extras hanging up near the wall. Again, this makes things much faster when we are out in the barn at 0400 trying to sort lambs, get pairs into jugs and then feed and water those pairs before going to work in the morning. We had visions of the sheep having babies all Thanksgiving weekend while we were home and so far they have not had a single lamb. They are going to wait until its super cold or a work day, I am sure of this.
I have been driving up to the far end of the farm every morning while I am off looking for coyotes. So far I have not see a single coyote. Mr Rainman found another old skeleton last week that we had not seen before so the coyotes got another one early in the summer that we had not counted yet. Predators 17/Farm 5 definitely not a farm winning year. On the plus side, a nice coworker who is leaving the area brought out some extra chickens this week. I am the proud owner of 12 new laying hens! The only real problem is they are not going into the coop at night so I have been catching them and tossing them into the coop at night. Tonight I only had to chase 8 into the coop but there is one stubborn long legged silver hen that is crazy and fast. She was flying around after dark when I tried to catch her to toss her into the coop. She is either going to learn to go in at night or we are going to find out just how fast she is at night when the raccoons come for her. So far my bet is on her, she is pretty agile.
The puppy has no fear and will crawl up onto anything. Her latest trick is to sleep on top of the table to either look over the porch railing or into the large window staring at us in the living room. She currently has the cone of shame on for licking a spot bare on her side. She hates the cone but has finally learned to walk around in it. The only down side is she just pounds into things with the cone, so you have to be careful if she sneaks up behind you so she doesn’t knock you down.
The main sliding door into the barn is dead. It has warped and is currently unable to be opened or closed. So Mr Rainman and I took the door off and then took the track down. We straightened out the track, closed up the track hangers and rehung the entire thing on a 2×10. Our hope was that if we pushed the door away from the barn a couple of inches the bow in the door would not rub on the side of the barn. The door is fairly easy to open but still very hard to close. We used the tractor to hold the door while we moved it off and on the track. The door weighs several hundred pounds. I ordered two new wheeled hangers and when they show up we will attach one and then cut the door in half and hang both sides of the door. This should take out most of the bend in the door. I like to use this door to go in and out of the barn. So hopefully in a couple of weeks we will have it back up and functioning. Mr Rainman convinced me to work smarter not harder by using the tractor to move the door around instead of fighting with it and trying to muscle it into place!
Well Winter has decided to sit in the wings and wait to pounce, this has been nice. The entire farm has greened up and we have gotten to hold off on feeding the animals. Mr Rainman came out on Friday and cleaned up the old house. There was quite the pile of dirt under the freezers. We had not ever moved them. I want to get a little more stuff moved out of that room then I can move the three other large items from my “room”. This will let me start wiring and ripping into the wall to reframe a doorway. I have all the wires pulled but I cannot get to the outlet boxes with all of the “stuff” in the way. I would like to be able to work on it intermittently through the winter. It’s inside so it won’t matter what the weather is like. Especially, if I can get that inside door installed, a small electric heater will keep the room at a temperature that is comfortably workable, pretty much anything over 45F. Mr Rainman also went into Alcatraz and burned out the sticker bushes (thistles). Our new bull was raised by a young man as a 4H animal and is very curious. You can scratch his head but he will toss it in annoyance that you are touching him. He won’t leave though. One of our rams is very tame also and it is disturbing when a 180# sheep sneaks up on you and you turn around and he is one foot from you and wants a scratch. He will then proceed to follow you around wherever you go. It’s unnerving. I keep thinking he is going to decide that I need a head butt and I have seen how him and the other ram go at it and frankly I don’t want to end up on the ground. So far he has been a total gentleman. Which is good cause otherwise he will make it into the freezer.
I was fairly flighty yesterday. I went into the freezer room and added a second window to the inside so I can have a “double panel” window setup! It’s really just two windows in the same hole but the second window can have foam stripping applied so there is no airflow into the room. This will help the room stay warmer in the winter so when I am in the man cave I won’t have to heat that room as much. It will also help with the insects. I had to dig around and find the right hinges and short screws so I could screw over the plywood covering the first pocket window opening. I knew I had something that would work, I just had to find it. The window frame wood is so hard I had to predrill the holes to get wood screws inserted. I still need to insert the weatherstripping. I don’t use it so there is none laying around.
I need to start putting out mouse bait or setup traps to clean out the mice. I found a mouse accidentally yesterday, it had fallen into an empty five gallon bucket I had up on a shelf. I don’t want them to get into the wife’s office and chew anything up.
I am pretty tired of the predators. There have been no raccoon tracks outside the chicken coop after I dispatched the raccoon last week. Someone reached out to me this week about needing to offload some chickens so hopefully I can replace the ones lost this summer. The three stooges came out this week and only saw two coyotes but they saw them in the CRP and its too tall to get a clean shot. So they will be concentrating on the lower portion where visibility is better and wait for them to come out of the CRP. The neighbor told me his has a friend with a thermal scope coming out to his place also. He also stated that a nearby neighbor lost a calf to the coyotes and since the deer population is fairly low the coyote meal train is leaning towards domestic tastes. Mr Rainman found a fresh carcass that was nearly stripped on Friday just across the creek in field 5. All dead animals are now going to the bone pile. It’s going to cause the coyotes to have to come out on the back hillside or cross the wheat field where I can see them. I was given an infrared scope that amplifies light I just need a new rifle now! There is some discussion around this at the house but it seems my motivation to get out of bed at night is being weighed in on the purchase. I do know that I will not be getting a thermal scope any time soon. Honestly, this is a stupid problem, but I am unwilling to spend $2k/year to fix it with a guard dog yet.
The sheep got out and in and around the vehicles. A gate got left open but since it is only pregnant ewes they are pretty easy to direct. It only took about five minutes to get them back into the correct space. Despite all of this we are very fortunate to live here. There are times I just walk out and realize that not everyone has the luxury of living in beauty and dealing with the natural process. It’s the best place in the world to live.
Mr Rainman came out early in the week and did a bunch of cleanup on the farm. It seems like we are always doing a lot of cleanup in the fall. This is probably directly related to how many projects I try and finish in the summer and just move on to the next thing without completing the first project. He went down into the root cellar and cleaned it up. I had made quite the mess when I wired the old house. I have a tendency to just throw my trash down on the ground. Especially if I am up in the air and have to climb up on a ladder or platform to work. There is no light down in the root cellar. I need to wire in an outlet and switch. I may be able to buy a light with a wireless controller, if I can then I only need to wire in an outlet. A light would be a great help when I am down here digging around for something. I really need to dump out all the canned food from the last 50 years. Honestly, I am afraid that there may actually be some botulism in one of these jars. Which means I will need to wear rubber gloves and bury the food when its emptied and then dip the jars into bleach water. This is a not priority kinda thing which is why there are a couple of hundred jars on shelves full of various foodstuffs still in the root cellar.
The puppy, Chance, has finally started to settle down and listen to us. I decided to see if she would still ride around on my shoulders like she would a year ago. Annmarie said Chance did not like it but she did wag her tail the whole time. She also grabbed onto my shoulder and chest so she did not fall off.
I had 22 chickens at the beginning of the week. I know this as I had just counted them for my chicken tracker. I try and count them at the beginning of the month so I have an accurate number. Last night I was sleeping downstairs when Annmarie came running down hollering that there was a chicken dying outside. I did not prep for this and coming out of dead sleep there are several things that have to happen, grab eyeglasses, footwear needs to be donned (slippers), pistol needs to be grabbed, spare clip of ammo (slip that into the top of underwear), large 300k candle floodlight (found in top of closet), then cycle action to load pistol, turn on laser and get outside! This time I knew to go right towards the chicken coop and when I shined the light alongside the coop there was a raccoon on the backside of the coop running sideways. I was only able to get off two shots before it went behind the chicken coop. I ran around the front of the coop, passed a dead black feathered Turken chicken on the ground, opened the gate and ran out into the ram pasture looking for a raccoon. I could not find it! I shined the light into the tree, up the dry creek bed, over by the barn and got nothing. I was pretty sure I did not hit anything, the raccoon was a long ways away, 80-100 feet. I need to start practicing those long shots. I say this to myself in the middle of the night but during the day I always find things to do other than practice with the pistol. I put the two other alive chickens into the coop, they were hanging outside the auto chicken door. I headed back to the house and the dead chicken was gone!
I was certain that the raccoon had circled around behind me and came back to steal the chicken carcass. I was less than happy but at the same time impressed with my adversary. After some choice directional language toward the creek bed I headed back to the house and stumbled on the dead chicken, it was alive! It had gotten up and walked away from its deathbed. I spent five minutes trying to catch the thing and it would not let me grab it. I was starting to get cold since I was only in my underwear. I told the chicken it was going to make excellent raccoon bait and went back into the house. I laid the pistol and light on the washing machine and set my slippers by the back door. On further pondering I should have worn my new rubber boots out into the mud, not my slippers.
I went back to bed with the wife and two hours later she was shaking me and hollering that a chicken was dying. This time I was ready! I shot out of bed, ran right to the laundry room and grabbed the arsenal and tools while running for the chicken coop. The raccoon was in the chicken yard and there is only one exit so I knew where it was going to come out. I started banging away as soon as it came out the yard entrance and had it down by the time it got to the hillside. After ensuring that it was dead I looked for the wounded chicken and could only find feathers.
During the day I kept looking for the black turken chicken, I have two of them and could only spot one. Tonight I went out to get eggs after dark and counted the chickens. I had both turkeys, so the raccoon bait lived! Unfortunately, the raccoon had managed to kill and remove two other chickens that did not have the lung capacity or brains to holler for help. I will now be enclosing the top of the chicken yard enclosure so that no predator can climb up the fence and down into the yard and I am going to add a second solar powered chicken door to the yard that has a light sensor that faces West, the auto chicken door on the coop faces North. My hope is the even if the coop door closes the chickens will be inside the yard by the time the yard door closes so the raccoons cannot pick them off. I lose the most chickens on the entrance to the coop as they are just slow and don’t make it in before the door shuts and I never check to ensure they all made it inside. Chickens take 8 months before they start laying eggs, I cannot keep feeding the raccoons. We just started getting 8-10 eggs a day on now 20 pullets. The new door will be here in ten days, here’s hoping I can keep the chickens alive that long.
