Category: Animals

Ever since Randy and I lived in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and worked at Burro Loco, a Mexican restaurant there, we have tried to acknowledge Cinco De Mayo even if only in a small way.

Yesterday, I soaked the rice, made homemade tortillas, and browned our usual ground hamburger/venison combination.  Then, the UPS man showed up with our electric fence cable.  I put everything into bowls in the fridge, and Randy and I spent the evening putting up electric cable in our pasture.  Dinner ended up being grill cheese sandwiches with homemade tomato soup I had canned the summer before.  Quick and easy!

You learn to adjust after a few years on the farm.  Something always seems to pop up and plans get changed on a regular basis.  Tonight, unless something else comes up, we will have our Mexican dinner in recognition of a belated Cinco de Mayo.

We now have ½ of our pasture (about 15 acres) fenced with electric fencing so our lambs can’t squeeze through the old existing fence and wreak havoc on my garden and Dad’s wheat field. 

They are calling for thunderstorms for the next two days, but we hope to get the other ½ of the pasture fenced, so we can stay on track with our three week rotational grazing.  We are trying to improve the quality of our pasture and decrease the need for de-wormer.

My in-laws are arriving this weekend and will be here for 10 days.  They are lots of help to us when they are here.  They have us make a list of things we would like to accomplish while they are here, and we work like crazy until they leave.  They are so great to help us around the farm.

Our Texel ram lambs are ready to sell.  Yeah!  We have two people interested already, so hopefully we will make a nice profit off of them this year.  They have done really well and look good, so hopefully others think so as well and buy them : )

Have a wonderful week!

Well the chicks were safe and sound this morning.  Last night we loaded all of them up and moved them back into our garage/shop, and Randy put cinder blocks all the way around the perimeter of the coop.  This morning he could see where the skunk had tried to dig under the blocks and wall to get in and didn’t make it.  This will only be a temporary solution for a couple of reasons.  It doesn’t look all that attractive, and I don’t think it will deter the critters forever. 

We are planning on digging a trench around the outside wall of the coop and burying tin at least 2 feet down.  Basically we will be extending the wall into the ground two feet.  Hopefully this will keep everyone out of our coop. 

The numbers were a little better than Randy first thought.  We ended up losing nine chicks and are still debating on whether or not we will replace them or not.  If we do it will be in the fall when we get our Cornish Rocks to raise for meat.

The sheep are doing well and see to be enjoying the pasture as opposed to hay.  We are getting closer to weaning which is never fun for anyone. 

We are late getting our sheep recorded to the Texel Sheep Breeders Society, so we will probably have to pay a penalty on a couple of them.  Oops, that is kind of my responsibility, and I pretty much dropped the ball.

My plants from Abundant Acres are supposed to be here tomorrow.  They were pushed back a week due to a late freeze. 

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Wednesday.

Monday started out as a great day and kind of ended on a bad note.  Every spring we borrow our neighbors tiller to work our garden.  The agreement is Randy changes the oil and gets it all ready so when I neighbor goes to use it it is all ready to go.  It works out great for both parties.  We don’t have a tiller and our neighbor is not a mechanic.  So, Randy tilled our garden and when he was nearly finished it broke.  $150, and two weeks later it is up and running again.  Randy got a phone call at 6:30 last night from our neighbors because the tiller had started smoking.  We got down there, Randy tinkered with it, and it threw a rod just like it did the first time it broke.  Our neighbor is being really great about it.  He knows there is a good possibility there is something else wrong causing this to happen over and over.  However, Randy is going to do a couple of things to it to see what’s going on.  The tiller is old and it may be a situation where he should just buy a new one.  When we went to bed last night we were pretty upset about it.  We hate borrowing and just needed a reminder that it is not a good thing to do.  We woke up this morning with better attitudes and decided we would just roll with the punches, fix it, and move on.

On my drive to work Randy called me to let me know a skunk had dug into our chicken coop and killed 11 or our 25 month-old chicks.  The skunk didn’t even eat them, just killed them for sport. 

Fourteen of them had gotten over or through the panel separating the chicks from the Banties and survived.  Isn’t that sad?  It just about made me sick this morning when he told me.  So, all our chickens are locked inside right now until we can figure out what to do to try to save the few we have left. 

Every morning starts with feeding our bottle lamb/lambs.  This particular morning it was really cold outside and the gate to the backyard was open, so our cute little bottle lamb made her way not only to the backdoor, but stepped right inside to have breakfast.

In other news, Friday and Saturday were spent putting up electric fencing in our pasture so we can 1) make paddocks to rotational graze our sheep and 2) block off a portion of the pasture so we can start replacing fencing.

This is Randy out in our pasture.  Our house is in the background.

We borrowed Mom and Dad’s four-wheeler and trailer and it made things so much easier.

Sunday, we sheared 36 sheep at our house and over 200 at Dad’s house.  We started at our house at 6:30 setting up and didn’t get home, showered, and settled until 7:00 that evening.  We were tired.

Monday, Randy took the day off and worked on my brother’s four-wheeler and worked on his pickup.  Hopefully we will have a pickup up and running again soon. 

Tonight we will be moving the chicks back inside their pen in the garage where they will be safe and sound.  Any suggestions for reinforcing our dirt floor coop are welcome.  I have read to bury 1 ½ to 2 feet of fencing around the perimeter, so we are debating on something like that.  We really feel dirt floors are the healthiest in a coop and would prefer not to do wood or concrete flooring. 

Our house is so cozy right now with the weather being in the 70s.  Windows open and cool fresh air blowing through the house.  What could be better?

What would a post be without a few dog pictures, right?

Here is Ash who doesn’t have the ability to take a picture with her eyes open.  She is playing with her favorite toy, Lamb Chop.

Here is Koal playing with the ONLY toy he has ever really played with, Animal.  Just incase you can’t read it, the front says, “Cats are not my friend.”

Have a wonderful day!

That’s how many baby lambs we worked (vaccinated, docked tails, and de-wormed) at Mom and Dad’s Sunday.  I got lucky and got to de-worm them, Dad vaccinated and docked tails, and Mom and Randy were the catchers.  By the end of the day we were all pretty tired.

I made shampoo over the weekend.  As soon as we have used it a couple of times and worked out any kinks I will share the recipe (maybe even do a fun tutorial on it).

This weekend we are putting up electric fencing to split our pasture in half.  Then we will start rebuilding our exterior fencing with goat fencing and eventually have it split into parcels for rotational grazing.  We have been wanting to do this ever since we got into the sheep business, but just hadn’t had the money or the time.  However, our pastures need some extra care, and we would like to at least cut back on our use of de-wormers if not eventually eliminate the use of them all together.

I planted a few more things in the garden yesterday.  It is slowly but surely coming together.  Just waiting on my heirloom plants from Abundant Acres to get here and we will be in full gardening mode.

Hope everyone has a wonderful day.

It’s just another one of those days here at work.  My co-worker is on vacation so I am all alone today. 

We are officially done lambing.  It ended with a bang, of course.  Our favorite lamb, Ma, had a major ordeal delivering her single ewe lamb.  I’ll spare you the details, but we are doctoring mama and baby and praying to avoid infection for the mama and pneumonia for the baby.  Things are looking good so far, so hopefully we have a completely happy ending.  So, it is safe to say this now without having to “knock on wood,” not including our aborted/miscarried baby lamb that started off our lambing season, we had no fatalities this season.  Any of you who raise livestock will appreciate this.  We had 18 ewes lamb this year and have 26 babies to show for it.  We didn’t have the highest percentage ever, but we are grateful for the healthy babies we have.  Two have already been sold and one is spoken for, so we are pleased.

In other news my Grandma had surgery to have her gall bladder removed and is doing really well.  Randy brought her home yesterday afternoon and said she looked really well. 

We have decided to buy her car from her since she is buying a new car.  With both of us commuting we put so many miles on our cars everyday.  Randy’s car is a really old, worn out car and may go at anytime.  Hopefully by this time next year we won’t need two commuter cars, but for now we are on the treadmill and contributing to pollution, the need for Middle Easter oil, and an empty house all day.  We’re working on it though.

Randy has been working with Ash, our blue heeler, in the sheep lots.  She is still a long way from independently herding sheep; however, she has made small progress in the form of not devouring sheep poo as soon as she is through the gate.  Baby steps!

I am off to a vet 1 and ½ hours away Friday to get a second opinion on our other dog, Koal.  He has allergies in the form of a rash and also has a small bump on his back we need to have looked at.  So, him and I are loading up (without Ash, she will heartbroken) and heading to a different vet to see if we can come up with something.  I will also be ordering CLO to supplement both of the dogs from here on out and also contemplating making Koal’s food.  I found a recipe that uses lamb which is in great supply here.  I’m just not sure I can keep up with it at this point in my life.  He’s always done really well on the food he is on now.  So, unless they have made changes to their food I can’t imagine it being the problem.

Other than that things are pretty normal here.  We placed an order for 25 Rhode Island Reds which should be here the beginning of April.  We lost another Bantie hen in our stock tank and are down to three.  It was decided to go with a larger chicken that can reach the stock tank without jumping up on the edge, so hopefully we have better luck with these.  Did I mention we are excited about having normal-sized eggs too!

Have a wonderful day!

I haven’t posted in awhile, so I thought I would real quick. 

Here are some pictures of my Dad’s Icelandic sheep’s babies.  They are the cutest little things!

And of course, what would a post be with out the cats involved.  They just happen to be the most photogenic critters on our farm.

This weekend we will be selling our two bottle lambs.  Yea!  We are also hoping to possibly burn our pile of limbs leftover from the ice storm and mow around our pasture so we can get it burned off soon.  Oh, did I mention build more lots and fence in the garden to keep the chickens out so I can plant seeds?  We’re going to need a long weekend :  )

Have a wonderful day!