predators

Even more fencing on field #1

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Today went a lot better than yesterday. Mr Rainman and I installed the wife’s seat covers in her car. Wow, this is not an intuitive or easy job. It took us 75 minutes with both of us working on it and we never would have gotten it done if Mr Rainman had not taken the time to read the directions! I was gonna wing it! Nope, there are a lot of disconnect this one thing, leave off or detach and then put back after you have fished the straps past. Mr Rainman did bleed on some of the covers but I think I got all of the blood wiped up so wife won’t notice. The underside of the seats have some sharp areas. Since we could not get it in under 60 minutes the wife had to drive my lovely two door color car. Luckily, there were not going to be any passengers as the passenger door handle is still missing. I don’t think I will ever replace that handle, it’s superfluous.

I did order a new inside door handle for the pickup today. It’s just too hard to shut the door with no handle. The handle broke off at both screw attachment locations. I am hoping the $25 replacement will last another ten years. My left thumb is healing up nicely, the divot I took out with the electric shears has filled in and I just have an eraser sized scab left. I was sure I was going to have an upside down U forever on my thumb.

I have not been able to catch or kill a coyote yet. Today, we had the rifle with us the entire time and did not see a coyote. I have started to look into thermal imaging binoculars and scopes but they are expensive. Plus, it looks like the scopes all want to go on a picatinny rail and none of my hunting rifles have that. So I am still looking into it. This is a very dumb problem.

We need to get rid of some sheep. I took some pictures today and posted them for sale on Craigslist. We will see how that goes. I am going to email the auction site. I tried calling but their voicemail was full.

Both of my helpers came out to work on the fence in field #1. We got all of the wooden H brace cross pieces up and got one of the H braces fitted with high tension wire. We ran out of wire from our used stash but Mr Rainman had left with the Kubota tractor and it has the forks on it so we can just slip the full roll of wire onto a pallet fork and hold it in the air. This should make getting a piece off of the appropriate size easy. Instead we switched to installing T-posts with the tractor. The ground is fairly rock free and after two rains the ground is a lot softer than it was earlier in the summer. I only had to pound it about ten posts total with the tractor bucket. The rest I could just push in with the bucket (full of gravel and 150# of steel weights on the driver side of the push bucket. The Apprentice and I kept it up till about 1300. We also got the holes drilled for the gate so it can be installed next. I have learned that there are differing priorities for the Apprentice. When I asked the Apprentice why she was not wearing leather gloves when handling the T-posts and inserting them into the bucket driver I was informed that a weird suntan was appearing around her wrists. She did eventually put on some gloves as the sun heated the T-posts up enough they were too hot to handle. I refrained from commenting. We are still having grip exercise discussions every day she works. I keep telling her she needs to be able to handle tools for 8+ hours a day.

Barn dig out happening

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I happened to have Tuesday off this week so I spent it fencing! I need to dig some fence post holes but the dead of summer is the wrong time for this to happen. I pulled on the broken railroad tie and fenced over the gate opening. I drove in T posts on either side of the railroad tie and wired it to them. Then I was able to drive in three T posts over the opening. I stretched out fence and tightened it all down. I am now about half way down the fence alongside the wheat field. I am going to continue the fence repair along the road next. This means I will only need to install one new section of fence along the creek side. I need the animals to get into field #1 to eat, half the field is still green due to subterranean water. I need about three days with a helper to get this done. Alone takes about 125% more time. Some things just take longer alone.

Thursday, Mr Flow came out for a couple of hours and dug out the chicken coop. I went and bought more wood pellets to put in there. I use the deep litter method and only dig it out once a year. The wood pellets work great to absorb moisture and keep the smell down. I get the cheapest kind they have, made here in Reith.

The plan on Friday was for him to come out and help me shear the last three alpaca. Nope, he got sick and called off around starting time. I cannot shear the alpaca alone, it takes at least two people and when they are not cooperating that is a hard two. I decided that I might as well start in on digging out the barn as it needed to be done also. It took a couple of hours to tear apart all of the panels and drag them outside. I have to leave one section as it is permanently attached to the wall. The sheep kept jumping over two gates so I created permanent panels to stop that and they cannot be removed.

I managed to get the manure forks installed on the John Deere tractor bucket and started digging out the barn. The tractor is small enough to get in and out of the barn. After two days of digging it out I am about 60% completed and I have only been at it about 7 hours so far. Yesterday, the tractor overtemp light came on. I ended up having to blow down the entire tractor, clean out the radiator and I even took out the air filter and cleaned it out. The tractor has two air filters, one inside the other and the inner was clean. Once I had it all cleaned out and filled with fuel I was able to go right back to digging out the barn. I have it dug out far enough I have to use the pitchfork and shovel out the edges and near the feeders. I just toss it into the middle and scoop it up with the tractor. For some reason I did not use a hat, just a do rag on my head and by that evening I had a lot of sun on my face! The horse has been bugging me while I am doing this so I took the time to give her a total brush down and brushed out her mane and tail. She just stands there and lets me do it.

Annmarie sent me a link from someone who wants to work before going to college. So far, in two days I have not been able to connect or get a commitment. I am hopeful I can as I would like them to help me with the alpaca. I am hopeful they will reach out on Sunday. She also sent me some information on old equipment for sale, yard ornament type. The exact same manure spreader that I already have two of was for sale! I called and got the third one! I will now have enough parts to get one going for sure. I had to back the trailer up to it, toss down the ramps and come a long it into the back of the trailer. It took about 30 minutes to get it onto the trailer. I will pick it off with the tractor forks. It will be a lot easier that way! She had an old 10’ hay rake but honestly it makes the piles too big for my baler and I am looking at putting less money into the farm not more.

One of the staff at the hospital had asked if her son’s could come out and shoot at the coyotes. I totally agreed to that. They have been out several times in the last week without coyote success. They are working on the pigeon problem. We had none this spring and now have about ten. They multiply rapidly if not kept in check. We are starting to have problems with ring neck doves again also. They are pushing out the native doves. One of the boys, now called Mr Hornet Tamer, has been walking all over the property scouting coyotes. He has found their crossing points and two old dens so far. Unfortunately for him, he also found the hornets living in one of the gates. The gates are metal tubes and the hornets love building nests in them. I usually pay attention and just open the gate quickly. He got popped several times and then called his mom to tell her he was going to the ER. She made him drive back out to me while I was building fence. Nah, he just needed some Benadryl. He slept most of the next day I am told. He did come out later in the week!

Predators 8/ Farm 1

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Friday I went up to field #3 first thing in the morning to attempt to call the coyote in. I am using the new electronic call I got this week. I hung out for about an hour and did not see a single coyote. The quail did not see me as I was hiding behind the cattle feeder. The sheep ran by without seeing me either, yet no coyote showed up. I went down and picked wild blackberries for a little over an hour. I filled all my containers I had brought. I only picked two patches and skipped another three. It was starting to warm up and the hornets like the berries when it gets warm. I went inside and washed them all off and then repacked them into individual bags and froze them. I ended up with 25 snack size bags full. Annmarie uses a single frozen bag every morning in her breakfast smoothie. I try and collect them for her and I will need to collect more in 2 and 4 cup quantities so we can make pie and cobbler throughout the year.

I got all the tools together to go up and work on the fence surrounding field #1. It is a green seven acre field that the sheep and cows need to get into so they can eat for a few more weeks. I had the tractor bucket full of tools and wire and stays to drive up there. Of course I did not take a rifle, there is no place to put it on the tractor, I would have to hold it the entire time. Of course I saw two coyotes running out of field #3 and a dead lamb in the field. They had just killed it and it was almost noon! I dumped off the supplies and went back to the house to get the rifle and call. I spent another three hours trying to call them back and had no luck. We have now decided to lock the sheep into the barn lot and feed them last years hay from the machine shed.

This is honestly a stupid problem. This weekend alone I have spent about 6 hours trying to spot coyotes. Each sheep lost is $100 down the drain. I will keep going out every day until I can kill them. The next evening when I walked up to the find the carcass and hopefully catch someone snacking I had to walk around looking for the carcass. The only thing left after 24 hours was a hide and a spine with a few ribs attached. Nothing else! I of course did not see a coyote.

Sunday I went out to get Annmarie some blackberries for her breakfast, as I froze all the others I had picked. I went out and checked on our thornless berries in the garden. I had to come back inside three times to get more containers. The berries are huge compared to the wild ones. I left some fresh ones for Annmarie and froze another 16 bags. I will need to pick berries again in about four days. I had plans to go up and look for coyotes again but ended up cleaning house instead. Sarah said she would help me shear alpaca after she got done at church. My helpers are gone again for a couple of weeks. So we need to get the alpaca done.

When she got home we rounded up the alpaca and ended up shearing four more in about three hours. The only ones left are the three babies. One of them had crawled down into the ditch and was covered in water so he would not have been easy to shear. We are planning on shearing the rest on Tuesday or Thursday this week to get them all done. Annmarie has been washing the alpaca and is on her second saddle. It is amazingly cleaner when she is done.

My priority now is the fence around field #1, coyotes and finishing the freezer room. I want to store the cleaned and ready to be cleaned alpaca fiber in the freezer room. This will get it out of the house and into one spot. I just have one piece of OSB to install on the wall and it will be ready. Okay, I need to wire five outlets also but that will only take an hour. I can wire the light later. I am pretty sure I stole power from the next room for the overhead light. Basically, I need to get some more stuff done on the old house but it will have to wait until this winter.

Predators 7 / Farm 1

Steve Hardin2 Comments

Mr Rainman came out today and sprayed the orchard. We have to use the backpack sprayer so the trees don’t get damaged and it took two sprayers full to get the entire area done. Once that was done he went out to mow the fields. I asked that he started close to the house and work his way outwards. I figured this was as good a plan as any. If the mower starts a fire at least the short grass will be near our house. There is a water fire extinguisher tank strapped to the forks on the front of the tractor. I don’t anticipate any problems with fire but its better to be safe.

He was in field four when he found the first lamb. It had just been killed, still soft. It had its throat torn and intestines opened up. Most likely a coyote did it. As he kept mowing he discovered a second corpse. All bones and a little hide with an ear tag. Two more sheep dead! This is just the other side of the barn lot. I know the sheep are in every night next to the barn because I keep getting up in the middle of the night when the puppy is barking. I see both groups of sheep as a sea of eyes when I am searching the area for predators. The tractor proceeded to overheat due to the dust filling up the radiator and then he saw only one quail baby. I finally messaged him and asked for some good news and he sent me a picture of a tape measure he found out in the middle of the field while mowing the cheat grass!

The dead sheep are still not enough loss to justify extreme circumstances or the expense of a guard dog, but it is a principle thing. I will be getting up at 0400 on weekends for a while and going up to the pasture and attempting to call in the coyotes. I purchased an electronic call that can be triggered from up to 200 yards away. I can stick the speaker into a patch of blackberries and back off about a 100 yards. I will be able to spot the far hillside, its within 400-500 yards. Not ideal with a 243 but not unreasonable and the whole point of the call is to be patient and let it come closer. I don’t believe we have a den of coyotes on the place this time. Usually, those become self evident when the pups start coming out, they are easy to spot. This one is very cagey and has only been spotted twice on the farm and in different places and not for very long.

I have not managed to spot any more raccoons, possums or skunks during my nightly excursions. I did manage to get some serious uninterrupted sleep this last night. I was so tired after two nights of broken sleep from night patrols that I heard nothing. There was a harvest moon the other night and it was amazingly bright outside.

Predators 5 / Farm 1

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We have been leaving the dogs outside at night this summer. The puppy has been raising Cain some nights but the few times I have gone outside to look, I have not spotted anything. The side effect of the dogs being out is that the sheep from the upper and lower pasture come in next to our yard in the evenings so the puppy can watch and patrol the yard. We have not lost any sheep to a predator since we started doing this, stupidity yes but not a predator. You cannot fix stupid.

We picked some plums from our orchard today. Another side effect of the puppy patrolling the yard is the deer are not coming in near the house. Every piece of fruit in the orchard is untouched by four legged animals, this is amazing! A first for us since we started the orchard. I had thought up plans to raise the fence another four feet and just leaving the dogs out at night has fixed it. We don’t even have the dogs in the orchard. My fence raising plans are on hold now. Because we are storing our fruit ladder in the orchard now we can selectively pick the fruit as it ripens. This will stretch out our fruit supply. The ancient pear tree (120 years we think) is going to die. It survived splitting but now it is getting some brown all throughout its leaves. I may get lucky and get one of the shoots to survive. I had one that was about five years old and I thought it was going to be a replacement and it up and died on me. As an added bonus I spent 15 minutes tossing fallen apples from orchard over the fence for the animals. They are starting to realize that the fruit is falling so they come check the alleyway twice daily looking for sweet treats.

I was switching sprinklers on the front hillside this week and found a dead possum. This is the second possum that has been killed. It was just dead. It either fell out of the tree or the puppy broke its neck. She doesn’t maul them or anything, she just protects her yard. Mouse (older border collie) just hides under the bridge footing. He has dug a nice hole under there to hide and stay out of the heat.

Wednesday night the puppy, Chance, was just going to town and would not shut up. This woke me up and even without my hearing aids it was annoying enough to get me out of bed. It was pitch black outside and I needed to retrieve the pistol and flashlight from the car, so I just ran outside in my slippers in the buff, the uniform of all night time farm predator responses. I ran out to the car, grabbed the flashlight and started panning around the farm. I spotted both herds of sheep and the alpaca. There was a cat under the flatbed trailer but nothing requiring my attention. I went over to the side of the yard and spotted the chicken coop and yard to make sure nothing was trying to get at my chickens, nope. Just before going inside I decided to pan the flashlight over the back garden. I spotted four pair of eyes on the back hillside near the creek. I whipped open the gate and ran down the sidewalk toward the creek and spotted four raccoons! I opened fire with the 22 pistol. It does not take long to throw ten bullets downstream at four targets. I was hitting them, at least two for sure but they don’t go down easily. I ran out of lead. This has now required me to break out the second clip to carry out with me at night. I got up the next night due to Chance’s barking but there was nothing but skunk smell. Luckily, it did not get on the dogs. Annmarie doesn’t credit me for any predator control until there is a body. I tell her its not like fishing stories but somehow she doesn’t believe me. Running around naked in the summer is a lot more pleasant than the winter!

Predators spotted so far this year are raccoons, skunk, coyotes and possum. I have two raccoon traps at the mother in law’s house but so far they have not yielded anything. They are eating her cat food and she knows they are around. The coyote has not been spotted in over two weeks.