slaughter

Predators 13/Farm 1

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Last week was another kick in the teeth and yet super productive. Mr Rainman came out and spread grass seed on field #1 and the triangle. He then proceeded to mow field #2 then sprayed Rejuvra on field #2, 3, 4A. We are going to try Rejuvra it was designed for CRP and grasslands. It creates a 3/4” deep barrier that kills newly germinated cheatgrass. So as the cheatgrass seeds germinate they are killed. Since the seeds can sit around for years this process is essential to remove the weed seed. This is a fairly new product. Our cheat grass was so bad this year that we are willing to just spray it on and see what happens. We didn’t get to hay or use the fields until after we mowed because the cheat grass was horrible. I need to buy one more quart of it to spray the lower fields. The joy of this is that it lets the preexisting grasses thrive and grow through the chemical barrier. As long as they spread by root propagation they can continue to grow and thicken while the cheatgrass is choked out. This was great and he just kept after it until it was done.

The kick in the teeth came when he went down to the lower schoolhouse field. It needed to be mowed to get ready for the spray. As he was driving the tractor around the field he found two more dead ewes! One had just been killed that day or the day before. It looks like something grabbed it by the throat and it bled out. The other one had obviously died earlier as there was nothing left but a skeleton. There is no question that the coyotes are winning this year. We have had a serious coyote hunter out here all last week. He had in around 24 hours combined for the week and on the last day spotted a coyote running up the creek bottom. He did not get a shot off. I have another hunter who came out today with a call and to get shown around the property. He did wonder if he could come out at night with a thermal scope and hunt coyotes. I of course agreed to this! I have another hunter coming on Sunday to be shown around. I am hoping that between them they can figure out how to kill several coyotes. There is no way we have one coyote killing this many sheep. We have not lost a single cow. My mother-in-law is losing kittens and cats quickly. We think the coyotes are eating the cats also. This is a stupid problem.

I will say the 300K lumen light I now use when going out at night combined with a green laser and silencer on a 22 pistol is amazing. Unfortunately, this setup is not helping me with the coyotes. If they are howling and just over the hill I remove the silencer and pop off a few rounds into the ground to scare them away. Let me just say that a guard dog would cost us around $1500-2000 annually for seven years. We are not even close to having lost enough sheep to justify that expense. Now that the barn is open the sheep can hole up in the barn every night and we have never ever had a predator kill anything in our barn.

Today I had to take our only cow left and two sheep in for butchering. I got the six feeder cows into the corral and managed to separate off the large one going to slaughter. The cows are crazy! I ended up spending almost an hour and half chasing them all over the fields until I managed to corral them by just shutting every gate the closer we got to the barn lot so there was only one place they could run. I locked the sheep into the little spot in front of the barn. I figured I could just wade in and catch two whethers. Man, I needed way more coffee this morning before engaging with the animals. The steer was crazy! He ran into the stock trailer. But I had to get in the trailer to release the dividing door, he ran at me and I had to scrunch up in the corner while he ran out. I released the door then went and chased him back in and again had to get into the trailer with him. I managed to slam the door closed before he jumped back out again. He raised hell while I went to get the sheep. Nope, they would not go into the barn. I finally had to go get Chance (border collie teenager), put her on the lead and then we walked the sheep right into the barn. I shut the barn door then tried to catch a whether. Nope, they were too fast. So I made a pen with a 2’ entrance, pushed all of the sheep into it then bum rushed the sheep from one end. They form a mob before they try to squirt past me on all sides. That is time to grab your victim and drag them to the back door of the barn. The first one had horns which make great handholds. The second one I had to drag out by its head and it almost got away a couple of times. I ran them into the corral and then down the chute. They jumped right into the trailer, but after the cow fiasco I rushed down the alley to get to the outer door. Nope, dame sheep took a leap at my head trying to get out. I had to toss a 90# sheep back into the trailer twice! I imagine it feels like being a hockey goalie. I managed to get the slider door shut and the animals transported with no other incidents. Once unloaded the cow did try and get at me through their pen. I don’t know if it was saying goodbye or using my name in vain as it tried to get at me, either way the outcome was the same and someone is going to eat good.

When I got back I went to the barn and fixed the lights in the barn and finished that last string. It was not my splicing connection. One of the lights had a bad connector and I had to cut off the first two connectors I had used and after replacing them they worked perfectly. We now have lights in the barn! This is going to be great, I just know it. More to come as it starts getting dark and we have to start feeding.

Moving cows is never easy, no matter what

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Mr Rainman came out this week and finished spraying all the major fields. He has been backpack spraying the difficult to reach areas and still has more of this to do but I think he can be done in less than two days and will have gotten most of the farm, even the difficult to reach areas.

I came home early on Wednesday so that we could sort cows for butchering. It turned into sorting off six month old calves, sorting out 5 kill size cows and moving the old bull. This was going fairly smooth. I say that loosely as sorting any live animal does have its challenges. Mr Rainman is not a cow person, even really an animal and every time I got in the corral to walk around and sort out 12 jumpy horned cows he would squeal and get nervous. All was going well, I had placed Chance (1 year old border collie) on a 30’ lead and she was doing well. We are working on “down” command at any time and “left” and “right” commands. We only use “circle around”, “to Me”, “guard”(creates dog gate), “away”. “Stay” and “easy”. Those are the main ones, we do realize there are a lot more commands but over the years these are the ones we use. The only other thing is they have to learn to work in the barn with mommas and babies and to stay and allow the lambs to pass or sniff at them.

Once we had the cows in the barn lot, I tied Chance to the gate so the cows would not try and push on it and then we proceeded to push them into the corral for sorting. Everything was going smoothly (first indicator you are about to be in trouble) when one of the slaughter size cows reached the corner gate chain and lifted it off its anchor slot and pushed the gate open and got back in with the main herd. We finished sorting all the rest of the cows and even moved the weanlings off to the third holding pen so we could still use the main two and chute. We tried to push the herd back into the corral and they did not want to go especially the one we wanted. So I grabbed Chance and we pushed them into the corral. She got rolled twice by the cows, but she just jumped up and got right back at it. We pushed the cows in and I ran our target into the chute after he tried to climb the five foot corral fence. I failed to notice that I had left the sheep ramp in the chute. It is for running the sheep into the back of the pickup. It was leaning on the exit gate with about a 60 degree angle and the steer ran right up that ramp and jumped off it from five feet in the air. So we spent 30 minutes getting him back into the pen and in with the four sale cows. We never could have done this without Chance. We sorted off one steer (not crazy one) for someone to come pickup on Saturday morning (next warning sign). We would keep him in the corral for a couple of days until he could be picked up. The bull went into the corral to spend the night. He is so placid you literally have to go up and nudge him in the direction you want him to go.

I get up bright and early so I can be in Lagrande by 0730. Annmarie comes out to help me, the first four just go right into our livestock trailer. I try and run the bull through the chute but he keeps dragging his horns and having to turn his head. He is 13 or 14 years old and has a very large head and decent horns. So we let him back into the corral and Annmarie suggests just backing the trailer into the pen, opening the entire back and getting him to just walk into it by himself. We do this and he is coaxed in under five minutes. He is so calm.

I am off early around 0530, I adjust the trailer brakes and start the trip. I am going 55 mph and it feels fine. I get on the freeway and keep it at 55 mph, I can feel the animals moving around in the trailer. I creep up Cabbage hill at 45 mph. Honestly, except for my nervousness it is going well until I start coming down the hill on the backside. The whole rig starts shaking every time I hit the brakes over 50 mph. It did not do this on the flats. So more white knuckled driving and I pull in to Hines meat. I was there before the place was open. The guy comes out, compliments the bull on how good looking he is and we try and unload them. We got them unloaded but of course they did not want to comply.

When Hines called back this weekend to give weights on the cows they said there was one “surly” cow that gave them some trouble. Wanna guess who that was? Due to the small stature of a Dexter cow you get a lean meat and much smaller steaks. The carcass weights came in at 327#, 332#, 320#, 313# and the bull at 673#. The bull went to all hamburger. We are charging $3.50/lb hanging weight now. The average for our area is around $4-4.50/lb hanging weight.

On the trailer trip home I just dropped the horse trailer off at the tire place and asked them to balance all tires, check brakes and pack wheel bearings. The lights worked great!

Cows headed to new home

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The sheep have gotten out of control! We keep having more lambs. All those sheep we sorted off last month because “they were not pregnant” have all had babies out in the main herd! Unfortunately, I think there are still 2-3 still left that need to have babies. I have lost track of how many we have had to date. Annmarie created a new spreadsheet and she has been keeping it up, I just need to review the data and post an update. Since we have had snow on the ground the sheep have really started going through the hay. I am pretty sure we are going to run out of hay in the barn. We only keep the small bales in the barn, the large bales are either sitting out or in the machine shed storage room. We have only used about 50% of our stored hay to date. I think we may end up storing 20 ton until next fall. This will cut down on how much we need to purchase next this year. It won’t cut it down by 50% but realistically by about 35% which is still better than nothing. I will probably end up pushing a big bale behind the barn for the sheep to tear into and eat what they want. They like to play king of the hill on them more than eat or get on top of the bale and while being king eat from the top of the bale. This will only be possible if the ground dries enough for me to move the bale with my little tractor. I have to make two 90 degree turns and the last turn is tight and if it’s muddy I won’t be able to make the last corner.

On Tuesday we found out that our butcher service was ready for two more cows and requested they be delivered on Friday morning at 0730. This means sorting the cows on Thursday evening, hooking up the trailer and locking them up in the corral so we can just chase them into the stock trailer first thing Friday morning. Honestly, the wife and I were both tired and we tried to push the cows alone and they would not go into the last enclosure. We just went and got the dogs and pushed them in. We usually try and just coax them in without the dogs first but it doesn’t always work. The dogs are more stressful on the animals than us just shooing them quietly toward the fence openings. Annmarie has convinced me that whooping and hollering usually doesn’t do much other than upset the animals, which it turns out is true. The dogs are far more effective than hollering and waving. Zeke still doesn’t like working the cows. He saw the sheep and wanted to go work them instead, I had to tell him we were working “cows”, he seemed a little deflated but went back to moving the cows out of the corner they had sequestered themselves in. Mouse loves the cows, he can stare them down, he can run at them, and if they still don’t move he gets to bite them on the heel or tail to move them, the sheep are boring. I always hook up the stock trailer and back it up to the chute the night before as this saves me from doing it first thing in the morning and it prevents the animals from exiting the corral via the chute. I had the trailer backed up to the chute, lined up perfectly on one try!! This is amazing after all the problems I had when we first got the trailer, it was brutal to try and back that thing up. I did have to pump up one tire, which is better than having to change one tire which is usually the case. The cows went right in and I drove them right to the secret location and unloaded them without a hitch. I thought about taking them for Dutch Brother’s coffee but decided we didn’t have time before their appointment.

I also managed to get the rest of our upstairs bathroom wired. I had a mild panic after I “misplaced” one of the outlet covers. I could not find it despite the 15 minute search. I used one of the other grey covers I had but it was metal not plastic and not quite the right color. I was hoping Annmarie would not notice. I was putting my tools away after job completion and the correct outlet cover magically appeared! It is now installed and they all match. I ordered simple metal shelf brackets last week and they came. If the weather permits we will cut 2” feather strips for the back of the wall and sides with room every three feet for a metal bracket. I want to get all the brackets installed without the shelves in place so I get the placement correct. This will make installing the shelves a simple matter of dropping them into place.

The last big news is we are having a full scale bug war at our house. The warming temperatures have caused the wax bugs and box elder bugs to come out of hiding. It’s crazy and we are killing about 30-50 bugs a day. I have finally resorted to using the Dyson portable vacuum 2-4 times a day to clear out the windows and occasional ceiling bug. I have sprayed the inside windows and it did not seem to do anything. It may be time to look at having new screens made for the windows. Ours have holes in them and are not all fitting tightly. When the weather gets slightly nicer I will start drenching the outside of the house in bug spray and see if I cannot knock down the amount around our house.

Annmarie and I have both been working on design ideas for the Craft Shack I want to build. I have been watching roofing videos on how to build gable roofs and dormers. She has been using CAD programs to draft out the size and inside layout. We think we have a final size. I want to use concrete columns with heavy duty floor jacks so I can level the building and make corrections in the future if necessary. Unfortunately that is 15 concrete piers with a $70 jack on top of every one. I do realize that the first layer is ultimately the most important to the long term viability of any building. We will start looking at prices of wood this summer. The cost of lumber is 2-3x higher than two years ago which is unfortunate for us. I am going to contact the two local wood mills and see if I can buy direct. The real kicker is what type of new and cool tool do I need to purchase to finish the job? I am thinking a rotary self leveling green laser with stand and a air powered framing nail gun. I have everything else we would need.

Wagon Train Woes

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We put off taking the cows in to be slaughtered for a week due to the snow and ice on the road.  I did not want to pull that horse trailer in that type of weather and the college was gracious enough to allow us to put it off.  I needed to be at the college between 1630-1700 on Thursday so they could kill on Friday.  There were to be no more delays, the wagon train must go on!  So we planned out the week, so that the cows would be moved to the corral on Wednesday and I would come home early on Thursday and load them and go to college, this seems fairly easy.

On Wednesday it started raining in the morning and proceeded to rain all day.  The barn lot is mostly dirt.  I came home a little early so I could work the cows in the daylight.  I decided that I would need some assistance which means letting the dogs help me.  I went into the Alcatraz area and managed to sort off the three steers I wanted in 10 minutes alone.  Once I got them out of the pen and the gates latched I needed help.  I brought the border collies over to help me.  This did not go as well as I wanted.  The steers kept going into the corner of the field nearest the Alcatraz fence and would not leave.  If I tried to get one dog to go in and root them out then I had to turn my back on the other dog.  This seemed to be a signal for the second dog to do whatever they wanted, which equated to balling the steers up into a corner and not letting them get out.  This meant that I started to holler and swear at the dogs.  It took 75 minutes for us to get the steers into the corral. 68 minutes was spent trying to get them past the first gate.  I was making the dogs lay down in the mud as they assumed that a crouching position meant they could move whenever they wanted.  I could hardly talk when I was done.  Luckily, for the dogs, it was 45 degrees outside.  I washed all the mud off of them in the outside faucet.  The pictures below are of the two of them just after we came inside.  They don’t look very contrite.  I could hardly talk the next day, everyone at work thought I was sick.   

I came home at 1500 on Thursday to load up the cows.  I felt so bad after getting the cows into the corral the night before that I did not hook up the horse trailer.  I had plans to do it but I was cold, wet and muddy and was not going to do it.  Why do it then when you can put it off until the next day?

Our housekeeper was just finishing up and offered to stay and help.  Things never go smoothly when you are on a deadline so I accepted.  I drove over and tried to hook up to the trailer and realized that I needed a smaller 2’ hitch ball.  I found a triple one in the machine shed but it had a straight stinger and this was going to cause the trailer to be canted to the rear pretty severely.  So I ran back to the old house to find a 2” ball already attached to a 2” drop stinger.  We got that installed and after the trailer was hitched Tisha asked me if I wanted the bad news.  I am on a deadline, there can be no bad news!  I had a flat tire on the rear right side.  Mind you a few months ago I had the other flat and the spare tire fixed!  So we pulled the trailer up onto a wooden block, elevating the flat tire so it could be changed.  I tried to put it on backwards in my rush, luckily Tisha caught it and told me so I could fix it.  Once the trailer was officially hooked up and ready to go I jumped onto the tractor and pushed the calf table out from in front of the chute.

Tisha backed the trailer right up to the chute opening and we have an sliding half gate so the openings lined up perfectly.  I just jumped in the corral, opened the chute gate and pushed them into the the chute.  Their horns kept hanging up on the walls so they had to concentrate on moving forward so they did not fight the transition at all.  Once they got into the trailer I chased them to the front half and closed our divider gate.  These are really handy as it keeps the cows in the front half so they cannot move around as much.

I was headed to town when I noticed the junk in the passenger floorboard and seat.  Annmarie was supposed to jump in and show me where to go when I got to the college.  She thinks the pickup should always be cleaned out.  I believe that it is a working vehicle and when stuff starts falling out when you open the doors then you need to clean it out.  A small difference of opinion.  As I was pulling up the college hill I messaged her.  She said she would meet me just outside her office building.  Well I had two cars behind me as I came even with her building so instead of just stopping in the road I kept going up and around the corner.  She called to ask where I was going and then we had a long discussion about being a farmer and how when you are hauling a trailer it is acceptable practice to just stop in the middle of the road.  She even argued that it was commonplace (hard to refute that) and I should have joined the club.  I made sure to take the extra time it took her to walk to my stopping location to move trash and stuff from the seat and floorboards so that nothing would fall out when she opened the passenger door.  Nothing  fell out but she was insistent that I needed to clean out the pickup.  We got the cows unloaded without incidence and went home.  Once they give us the hanging weight I will send bills out to the three buyers.

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Holiday slacking

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It has been a not very productive December. I have actually done some things but not very exciting unless you are my wife. I spent a couple of weekends cleaning the inside of the house!

I got sick one weekend and it has rained hard twice so I did not feel the urge to go outside in the rain voluntarily. Annmarie reminded me this morning that it has been a while since I posted a blog page. I thought it had only been 2 weeks, turns out it has been exactly three weeks since I wrote the last one. I was told that my reading audience was craving a new post and to keep the readers satisfied I need to write. So I decided to summarize the last three weeks and set up the next year. I really need to work in my 2019 financials before the end of the year. I failed to post this after we completed our taxes in April. I will get those out before the end of the year. I publish them so that people can understand what it costs to get into farming/ranching. I would encourage everyone with a desire to do it, but you need to be realistic about who long it takes and what it costs and all the setbacks possible. This is a labor of love for us. It has taken us almost ten years to get to this point and once I get the hay equipment figured out in 2020 we will be self sufficient. I think this is the true key to success.

Sarah and I worked on the new yard fence yesterday. I remeasured and cut posts so they all are the same height from the top rail. I had a low one so I had to go back and recut them to get them matched. We installed eyebolts but ran out. I thought I had enough but I was 6 short. Not too bad considering I really needed 51 eyelets to complete the new fence. We got the one side installed, there are three wires stretched piano tight on top of the fence below. Zeke cannot jump over it now. He also cannot crawl under it. He has been getting out of the yard nonstop and it is making me crazy. So I watched him a couple of weeks ago. He went up to the front fence by the cars, he jumped up touched the top rail and landed back in his starting spot. He then jumped up and grabbed the top of the wooden rail with his front feet. He then hung there briefly and then scrambled up the fence with his back feet and ducked under the two wires on the front fence. There is a 6″ gap between the board and first wire. It took him 10 seconds and he was out of the yard. We added a third wire 3″ off the board yesterday. He should not be able to repeat that trick. This leads us to getting the new fence Zeke proofed. He is savvy enough to test any stretch that is a perceived barrier. He is proof that any weakness can be exploited given enough time and motivation.

Annmarie and I have had a lively discussion about my fence building next year. I know this is crazy but I like building fence. I also like the ability to segregate and move the animals around which cannot be done without lots of fencing. Due to the new hay endeavor I am told that I can only fix one fence, the one behind our house that keeps the animals down by the creek. It needs a new corner post and smaller gate and restretched. This is so we can run the cows from the schoolhouse up to the orchard and into the barn lot without going out by the cars and houses. This will be the first time we can do this as I just cut in the gate into the orchard this year. I negotiated for a second small section of fence in the orchard so we can create a funnel and fence off the area we want to plant Lavender in. We are looking at around 50 plants. I just remembered I did not finish that new gate. I have 70 feet of fence to finish down by the front ditch. So three small, tiny, insignificant stretches of fence to repair next year. Each section can be done in a single day. I will need the tractor for each section though. I have been trying to create new starts from my African Violets. I have had leaves in water for a few weeks. They had just started to put on roots so yesterday I planted them in mud hoping they can get a grip in their new home. I have five new plants started and I still have 5 more empty African Violet pots. They do so much better if you have the special pots. My plan is to remove the books from the book shelf and get only African Violets growing. We have some bulbs in a flat bucket that starts to grow every Christmas. This year I moved them to the second shelf so that the shoots can grow up through the mesh above and not fall over! I am constantly having to try and prop them up.

The hallway is now painted and I just need to order in some more wooden trim for the floor. This is a cash flow issue and currently I want to get the upstairs bathroom completed. I have all the floor tile and next weekend will go buy all the hardiboard and the paint on red colored waterproof sealant. I also need some mastic but since I am only doing 80 square feet I am just going to buy a premixed 3 gallon bucket. This project will get off the ground by the new year.

I got a Christmas package from my pen pal, Lady Evale this week. She sent fresh from her yard Matsuma tangerines and Myers Lemons. I got this amazing bottled ginger ale pop made with all real ingredients called Swamp Pop. It was amazing. I tried to buy it on the internet, and yes it is possible but ouch the shipping was twice the cost of the product. So I am going to pass. I have her package almost ready to go, I have been on the lookout for items since this summer. I need the right size box now. It is always a pleasant surprise to receive something out of the blue. The Christmas lemon meringue pie is coming from her lemons!

I have 26 baby chicks left out of 36 and only 8 laying hens. Since it is winter I am back down to my 25% production rate. Not very many people are getting eggs from us now. I think we sell 2-3 dozen a month now. I am hoping that changes in the spring time. It is supposed to and we will have quite the color variety on eggs when it does.

We have three calves to tag and band. I had to order more ear tags last week. We have had the same bull this entire time and he has thrown 2 boys for every girl without fail for the last 8 years. This is not normal. Our sheep female to male ratio is leaning towards more males but only by 8 and that is after 370 lambs have been born. We started ear tags with #1 and just keep going.

We have only had 3 lambs in the last 6 weeks. It is making me crazy. The ewes are very fat and I thought for sure December was our month but it is looking like January may be the month everyone explodes. We have three cows to be slaughtered in January so they have been eating as much as we can feed them. Still its only grass or alfalfa, we don’t finish them with grain so they are pretty lean.

This morning it was beautiful. Some days this is what makes it great. I do realize its a lot of work, but what else would I do with my time? I need two more used weathervanes. One for the old chicken coop and one for the old lamb shed, both pictured here. I may need one for the machine shed also. I think every old barn building should have a weathervane on it.