fourfarmdogs – Page 69 – Canfield Farms

New Twin Lambs Today

Posted on February 22, 2009 by fourfarmdogs

jacoblambs Our Jacob ewe lambed today- in broad daylight, which was cool. We didn’t notice her in labor at all this morning during feeding, later I saw her hanging her head a bit. But she was pretty subtle, the next time I looked up, she had a lamb on the ground! The second one came easily about 20 min later, I helped just a bit because one leg was backwards.

The LGD was so well behaved, curious, but gentle. She licked the lambs a lot. I did separate the ewe into her own jug tonight though, to help make sure both lambs eat. They look great- a ewe lamb and a ram!

Curtailing the Exuberance of a Young LGD

Posted on February 21, 2009 by fourfarmdogs

lgc_withjug Our livestock guardian dog (who still doesn’t have a name!) is doing pretty well. She’s definitely got the right stuff- big bark, loves the sheep, weatherproof coat, and just lays around most of the day. But, right now, she is still incredibly SILLY- just like any four month old dog would be.

In general, she gets along well with the sheep, she likes them, and they don’t mind her. Their inter-species communication functions well on a basic level, they understand she means them no harm, and she seems to find them to be pleasant company. But where this breaks down is that she still wants to play like a young dog does, and she hopes they’ll want to as well! She has moments of high energy and exuberance, where she leaps about, grabs the sheeps’ body parts, and tries to get them to engage in a good old wrestle. Of course, another dog would gladly sign up for such a ruckus, but wrestling is just not in a sheep’s repertoire.

The adult sheep have been able to manage this so far, they just move away from her in irritation, or butt her to send her on her way. Though I’ve seen her tugging on their tails and ears, she hasn’t seemed to do damage to them. Her advances are purely good-hearted: I don’t see any hint of prey drive going on, she honestly does just want to play with her “friends” and she’s disappointed when they flee. But, this has not been good for the lamb. He tends to just hunker down and try to wait out the rough play. At first, she just made a few small tooth marks in him. But eventually, she bit him up good in the hock, and now he is lame. So, I had to make a separate section of the pen for his mother and him.

I’ve tried a few other things, with limited success. First, I tied an empty milk jug to her collar, with the idea being when she leaps and pounces, it’ll bounce and hit her in the face, providing enough of an irritant to slow her down. This actually worked well for a few days, she was terrified of the thing, and sat stock still for about 24 hours. But, now she’s used to it, and though I do think it makes her walk more carefully, it doesn’t slow her down that much.

lambcreep The second thing I tried was making a creep for the lamb to get into, that would keep the dog out. I made an open-ended tunnel out of a grid of wire, so that even if she did a bunker crawl in after him, he could exit the other end. I showed him this, and he seemed to “get it”- I often saw him sleeping in there, and the dog couldn’t do much to him. But, I the ewes kept wrecking the tunnel. They are shedding now, and are itchy, and they found that cramming their huge, pregnant bodies in there made for a splendid all-over scratching tube. 😛 But then they’d get stuck in there, and brute-force their way out, wreaking havoc with my petite lamb hut.

So, for how, he’s segregated so his leg can heal, poor guy. I have ordered 320 feet of electronet and a battery + solar panel charger. That should arrive next week, allowing me to re-configure the sheep and dog areas a little. Everyone can have more room, and I can separate out the soon-to-lamb ewes from the dog. Just in time, as they’re due the first week in March!

Recycling Old Farm Junk

Posted on February 14, 2009 by fourfarmdogs

recycle1 Our house, though newly-placed upon this lot, resides on a dairy farm that was homesteaded around 1885. Of course the original farm was much bigger, but our lot has/had the last remaining buildings from the old farm- the barn and the silo. The barn fell down last spring, after not having ever been re-roofed since it was built in 1902. What we have left is a major rubble pile, not just of barn wood, but of metal products of every type imaginable.

100 years of farming tends to produce a lot of stuff, and it is our aim to clean it up and get it out of here. I understand how farms get messy, because farmers are busy and tend to leave things lying around. But we’re determined that our farm not be a messy one, so we’ve been working hard to incrementally clean up this century-worth of junk. We made a big stride forward in the last two weeks, by making a trips to the dump, the appliance recyclers, and the metal recyclers.

We had two old and broken refrigerators that were in the barn. In our county, there is only one place you can bring those, and you must pay $20 per appliance (they then dismantle them, use the good parts in decent-shape appliances, and dispose of the rest safely). So, it was good to see those things gone. The barn was full of bathtubs that were used for water troughs, and there was an old truck bed lying out in the dirt. Those comprised one truckload for the recycler- this was 5/8 of a ton of steel, for which we were paid $35 (I think). We were just happy to get rid of it and have it be recycled, so the money was a bonus. We were excited to find a new metal recycling lot very close to us, so it’s a convenient trip (and always an interesting one, to witness that little-seen side of the world- all the junk our society creates, and where it goes…)

recycle2 The second load of metal was 60lbs shy of a full ton, and they paid us more that time, I think we got $60-something (not sure why- better metal than bathtubs?). There was a little bit of everything in there- stove pipe, broken gates, barbed wire, bent T-posts, black iron pipe, elecrical wiring and breaker boxes, cables, gutters, and I don’t remember what else!

We took a full truckload to the dump-mostly of old black plastic and orange plastic fencing, a few things that were broken when the barn fell (like my almost-brand-new fiberglass extension ladders! 🙁 ) and miscellaneous crud that was in the barn and around the yard.

Our Isuzu NPR flatbed truck sure comes in handy for these types of chores, and the hydraulic lift gate on the back is marvelous for lifting heavy things. It sure felt good to get rid of that more than two tons of useless junk!

LGD Introductory Training

Posted on February 11, 2009 by fourfarmdogs

lgd2 Here’s how I think it’s going to work integrating the LGD into the mix. I’m not confident that all will play out as planned. But I’ll have to be flexible and adjust the plan as I see how things are going, because I don’t really know how things will go!

Now:LGD is in a small pen with all the sheep. The idea being that she will be lonely and bond with them, not having much other company to prefer. And, that they will acclimate to her presence, having no way to get very far away from her. This part is going swimmingly- she already easily moves amongst them with little disturbance on their part, they tolerate her calmly, and she really seems to like them.

She is starting to try to play with them dog-style a little bit, which is not ideal, but expected. The lamb is already a good 20lbs, so should be able to remove himself from her silliness if he needs to, and the rest of them are big enough to butt her if she gets on their nerves. As the other ewes lamb, I’ll remove them to a separate pen for as long as I can, to give the lambs a chance to grow a little before having to contend with the dog.

The other good thing that’s happening now is the LGD is barking at night and barking at anything that approaches the pen. This should be putting the coyotes on notice that there is now a big dog in the picture. Hopefully they’ll just start steering clear of anyplace they hear her barking. And she’ll be gaining confidence that when she barks, she is able to make intruders leave.

ASAP: get that dog more tame and leash-broken. The 1st day she was here; she was stressed, and fairly demure. The 2nd day, she was feeling her loneliness, so was very solicitous of our attentions. But by the 3rd day, she’s bonded to the sheep, and is playing a bit of keep-away with people and getting very silly. Before she can leave that pen, she needs to come when she’s called and be able to walk reasonably on a leash. I suppose those are the only two people skills she’ll ever need to have!

Soon: catch the llama and move her up to the pen, so she can also acclimate to the dog. Fill in the gaps under the gates to make it harder for coyotes to get into the pasture.

At the end of the month: move the dog and all but three sheep back down to the pasture. Keep the three ewes that are due in March up by the house, with the llama, until they all lamb and can be turned back out. Since I don’t know when the Jacob ewe is due, I may let her take her chances pasture-lambing rather than have her potentially penned up all spring, waiting for her due date.

I’ve been planning to buy portable electro-net fencing in the future, so I can utilize it to do rotational grazing. That purchase is now higher priority, because I feel it’ll be safer to move the dog and sheep down into a smaller area within the big pasture. That way, the dog and sheep can spend more time bonding, the sheep won’t get too far away from the dog’s protection, and the hotwire will offer some protection from coyotes to all of them until things are more stabilized.

New LGD

Posted on February 8, 2009 by fourfarmdogs

lgd Well, here she is. Serendipitously, when I needed a livestock guardian dog (LGD), I was able to find one in a week’s time. My friends Sara Jo and John had a litter last fall, and this girl was the only one left. She is a four month old Maremma.

I know all the books say to get a “trained” adult, and only get pups when you can raise them with an already-trained dog. And I know all the books have advice on how to spend months training and acclimating the LGD to the sheep, lambing, etc. following very strict and gradual procedures. But, this advice ignores reality a little bit. It’s hard to find trained adult LGDs-I’ve been looking out for one since August. I did see one available all the way in Idaho- but it was an older dog, and I worry about buying from a person about which I know nothing. That’s not really the “dog show way.” And that’s an awful long way to drive (though I admit I wouldn’t hesitate to buy a good competition dog from anywhere in the world).

And, the training advice silently assumes that while you’re training the LGD, you don’t need the LGD to be working. This is only true once you already have one, and are training up a new one. So, there just aren’t a lot of options when you need you first guardian dog asap.

I discussed this with Sara Jo, who says she had the same problem. They were losing several sheep per week by the time they concluded they must get a dog. So, they bought an 8-week old pup in the fall, raised him in the barn with some ewes for a few months, and then put him out with the sheep and hoped for the best. And, it worked fine, and they have not had a single sheep lost to predators since then. Since then, they’ve acquired and raised several more LGDs.

Sara Jo reports it hasn’t always gone perfectly. A few times, the younger dogs have tried to play with the lambs and chase them around. This has resulted in bruised and scratched up lambs, but nothing worse than that. She finds that scolding the dog for this usually trains them not to do it. And, a few times she’s had the dog get possessive over newborn lambs, such that the dog doesn’t let the ewe near them. But, she’s just separated that ewe/lamb pair for a while, and then things were OK. I’ve read that young LGDs can sometimes be tempted to snack on newborn lambs, but SJ has never had this particular problem.

So, with this advice, and not having many other options, I decided to go for it and I picked up the dog today. Having her guard as a young dog is not without risk- though she is about 65 lbs already, she still has her puppy teeth, so she is somewhat vulnerable if she were to be attacked. And, there is risk that her immature behavior could result in some loss of lambs. But, this is better than losing pregnant ewes! She’s not going to be guarding yet, but I’m hoping with careful work, she’ll be ready to soon. I think I have figured out a decent plan for making it all work out, but it sure is a big change of plans!

A Little Home Llama Dentistry…

Posted on February 7, 2009 by fourfarmdogs

Our llama is an older lady, and we don’t know her whole history. Suffice to say it may not have been ideal. One thing I noticed as soon as we got her is that her teeth stuck out of her lips and grew at an odd angle. I’m not a llama expert, but llama teeth look like they’re configured the same as sheep- they have lower front teeth for grass cutting, that mesh with a hard upper dental plate/gum. Ideally, they should line up so that they can tear grass. Dolly’s clearly did not. I could see that when she grazed, she had to flip her head quite a bit to rip grass off, which is probably not efficient.

I’m not sure what causes this condition, but I suspect the primary cause may be no natural grazing, in an animal that’s fed hay and grain year-round (which I believe Dolly was before we got her). Eating hay and grain only requires gobbling up feed and grinding it with the back teeth, so the front teeth probably get no wear. The front teeth are designed by nature to continually grow, to compensate for incredible wear they’d normally experience from grazing. Dolly’s teeth were not only too long, however, they grew more horizontally than I would expect, and were curving to the side. I’m not sure what to think about that- perhaps it is congenital, or perhaps her too-tight halter played a role. Anyway, it needed to be fixed, because at our house, she needs to graze.

I searched for information on this condition, but found relatively little in my books at home and also on the Internet. Most mention of llama teeth is in relation to cutting fighting teeth off of male llamas- so at least I knew the teeth can be cut. I found this $219 value, intimidatingly large tooth cutting implement, the Tooth-A-Matic, but I can’t justify buying such a thing for possibly a one-time use. (It does look like it might be great if you found yourself needing to cut llama teeth very often!)

Finally I found this really helpful article, written by Eric Hoffman, complete with clear pictures, on using a Dremel tool to grind teeth down. Ok, that didn’t sound so technical once I read that. Dolly’s place on our farm is to protect our sheep investment (and she’s not doing a very good job of that even), and I really don’t want her to become a big investment in her own right. So I’d prefer to avoid vet bills if at all possible, and I am pretty comfortable doing a lot of basic medical things on animals. But, I’d avoided tackling her to do this kind of dentistry experiment, knowing that it would only add to her wariness of us, at a time when I want her to become more tame and trusting.

But, while she was in the barn recovering from her surfing stunt, I decided it was time. I didn’t want to let it go too long, because I was concerned about her ability to keep weight on if she cannot graze effectively. I didn’t know when I’d have her as a captive audience again, and I figured it would be better to do something “mean” to her in my parents’ barn, so at least she’d not associate it to being caught in our field.

So, I did it, and it turned out to be really easy! I had envisioned a possible rodeo with her bucking all over, and me and my Dremel tool going flying, resulting in me crying Uncle and calling a vet. But, not at all, she was very good. I used a metal grinder attachment for my Dremel, the kind with diamond-shaped scores along a wide cylinder. My mom helped me, and at first we did stick a broom handle in her mouth to help keep her lips and tongue out of the way. But at some point, it fell out and I ended up finishing the job just with my leather-gloved thumb holding her mouth open. She was surprisingly calm about the endeavor, and it only took a few minutes. I nicked her once in the lip somewhere just a little bit, such that there was a trickle of blood, but that was the worst of it.

I wasn’t able to get her teeth as aligned to her dental plate as I would have wished, because they are not growing at a vertical enough angle towards the plate to make a clear location of contact/meshing. And I didn’t want to take TOO much off- I wasn’t sure if I’d eventually hit the roots of the teeth and cause her pain. But, I was pretty satisfied with the result- at least they are all pretty even now, and closer to ideal. And now they only stick out of her lips a tiny bit, so she looks a little less dorky too! Poor girl, little by little, we may get her back into shape again.

Welcome to the Rough Part of Farming

Posted on February 4, 2009 by fourfarmdogs

This morning when I went to feed the sheep, three of the Jacobs were not there to greet me, and the fourth one was upset. I found them- all dead in different spots of the pasture. Coyotes again, I’m sure. One was eaten, the other two looked unharmed- I imagine they were run until they were overcome by stress. Sheep will do that- if a dog or coyote gets them down, they go into shock and die right there, even if they are not injured. Those two were still warm, so I cut them open to check for live lambs- just in case, but there were none. Then I had to get going and get to work, I had already missed a 7am meeting. If I have the wherewithal, I may try to butcher them out when I get home, to at least make dog food out of them.

The first loss was hard, this one is much harder. Now I see we have a serious problem! And I feel even worse since these sheep were a gift from Lynn! Amazingly, the lamb is still OK. So, I suspect that the sheep that flock well are safer– these three ewe lambs probably split off too easily, being new to the herd. But, no time to despair, I need to take action to make the remaining sheep safer. The remaining Jacob ewe is going to be vulnerable this week, she is distressed and not flocking well. So tonight I’ll move her up, and possibly pen her together with #33. That way they can bond, so that the Jacob will stay with the group better once she’s back out there. Since I don’t know when she’s due, she may have to live by the house until she lambs, whenever that may be.

This weekend, we’ll try to fill in the gaps under the gates where coyotes can most easily get in. I believe coyotes can probably get into anything if they want to, they are extremely crafty. My family once knew a woman with a dog/coyote cross pet that would bring home roasts she had robbed from people’s freezers! The reason she ran loose was that her owners gave up trying to contain her: she escaped every effort to lock her or tie her up. And, I read in a book about a researcher whose captive coyotes had been letting themselves out of their chain link kennels during the night, walking along the ridge poles to freedom and fun, and then putting themselves away in the morning. It took him a long time to figure out what was going on, their footprints in the snow was his first clue. So, I won’t fool myself into thinking we can keep them out for sure. But we can at least make it less convenient for them to get in.

Ugh, I am so bummed. But, it’s part of the deal, buying meat from the store is easy, you don’t have to think about all this going on behind the scenes. Farming is hard, you’re right there to witness the rough edges of Mother Nature, in all of its glory of birth and its sadness of death.

New Jacob Sheep

Posted on February 2, 2009 by fourfarmdogs

newjacobs My friend Lynn has Jacob sheep. They are a “primitive” middle-Eastern breed known for their hardiness and self-sufficiency. Due to some recent changes in her lifestyle, she has less time for sheep now than she once did. So she gave us (for free!) four bred ewes to thin down her herd.

We waffled a little bit on whether to take on a different breed, and one that needs shearing. But, I do love their markings, and combined with their independent traits, they may be a nice addition to the genetics in our flock. I imagine we’ll probably breed them back to Katahdins to “breed the wool off” in a few generations, and register the 50% lambs next year. But, who knows, maybe we’ll find we like the wool and its market and will end up keeping two separate flocks.

The ewes are calm, and despite me tagging them and trimming their hooves before I turned them loose, and a little bit of dominant chasing by our ram, they settled in and grazed in under an hour. The one on the far left is a “lilac” or dilute color, the other three are black and white.

Goodbye Teflon

Posted on February 1, 2009 by fourfarmdogs

browniesinskillet It has been a goal of mine for several years to swear off non-stick cookware. I believe that the potential health risks are just too concerning. Knowing that people have killed their pet birds by accidentally leaving a non-stick pan on the stove, creating toxic vapors, just makes me wonder what it does to me.

And, the warnings that come with these skillets- to never use them on high heat- worry me too. Who can cook without ever going above medium heat? I feel that even using great caution with the pans still leaves the risk that molecules of non-stick chemicals are making their way into my food, every day, in small quantities. There are so many chemicals in our environment that we cannot avoid or control, I want to minimize the ones I can control.

So, we’ve been building an inventory of cast iron and stainless steel pans over the last year. Thus far, I prefer the cast iron, it seems easier to clean. It works great for baking- I’m tending to choose my 12″ skillet for brownies (shown in the photo) and cornbread over a 9″ square baking pan. The cast iron makes a nicer crust, and the product comes out clean and easily.

We’ve adjusted well enough to the new pans to have finally given away our old Teflon pans to a charity. The only trouble we’re still having with the cast iron is cooking delicate things, like fish and eggs-over-easy. They stick to the pan too much, and scraping them off the bottom gives them a rough, unattractive appearance. Teflon clearly wins in performance here. Anyone have suggestions on ways to cook fragile foods in non-non-stick cookware?

What I was suprised to learn is that cleaning cast iron isn’t as much work as I thought it would be. After the pan has cooled a bit, I give it a good scrub with a metal scrubber under hot water. I pat dry, then apply a thin film of olive oil, spreading it with a paper towel. We keep a bottle of olive oil out on the stove, with a pour spout, so oiling the pans to keep them from rusting is easy. Next, I’d like a nice over-the-stove ceiling rack on which to hang them. Since we use them almost every day, I leave them sitting out on the stove. But it’ll be nice to have a better place to store them sometime in the future.

Scrawny Ewes and Scraggly Poodles

Posted on January 31, 2009 by fourfarmdogs

shiveringsheep I keep an eye on sheep listed on craigslist, mostly because it’s helpful to see the price ranges out there, and how cheap a buyer could get an animal compared to what I might be wanting to charge. My opinion of animals listed on craigslist is that they are generally “bottom of the barrel” quality; with a few listings maybe being lucky hits for nicer animals that people are just clearing out of their herd for acceptable reasons. In general, it is my opinion that breeders of good animals often don’t need to advertise, especially in a forum like craigslist, because demand for their animals is already pretty high via word-of-mouth.

All that said, I am tempted by things I see on craigslist, especially when there are seemingly good deals, and the animals conveniently nearby. In the back of my mind, I’ve been thinking I’d like to increase my flock size a little bit more, right now, with some unrelated animals. And, with all this scrapie reading I’ve been doing, it occurred to me that if I add animals quickly, before my official start date, I’d be a little bit ahead of the game. Katahdins are not very common in our region, so this is what led me to express interest in a certain ad I spotted, offering for sale two 50% Katahdin ewes, both bred.

The advertiser explained they were mature ewes, proven breeders, good feet, one was black (I really want a black one!) and that they were bred back to a nice purebred ram. She wanted $100 apiece, which is pretty fair for middle-aged, bred ewes. None were registered, but I was thinking, that’s ok, I’ll know their breeding, and I can register the 50% offspring next year. She also mentioned she was selling them for a friend who was in over her head with her own pregnancy and needed help re-homing some animals (but was a knowledgeable and experienced breeder), and that one of the ewes was “a little thin.” Ok, so, I can deal with that, I’m graining now anyway, and ooohhh, a solid BLACK ewe!

I didn’t ask for pictures, because it all sounded good, and I didn’t think anything in a photo would convince me not to buy them. She was a 2 hour drive away, so I made a Sunday appointment to visit. Kirk decided to join me, which would turn out to be a good thing. I drove the van, brought cash, and halters and lead ropes, ready to haul them away if I/we decided to buy them.

Well, when we get there, there is a lot of hubbub and things going on-kids, pets, livestock, toys and fowl all over the place. Someone else is there with some not-very-purebred, scraggly-looking poodles, which she explains, she just procured by trading them for a saddle (and she’s got another poodle she’d like to unload, and wants to know if we’re interested in buying it off of her). This kind of thing strikes me as odd, the idea of trafficking poodles. I’m not so keen on that, coming from the venerable dog show community where a purebred dog purchase is a serious lifetime commitment. But, I let it slide, change the subject, and we go check out the sheep.

The black sheep is a cool sheep- a bit small, but otherwise nicely put together, good feet, good udder, good teeth. But, the other sheep- ooh boy, she’s not “thin,” she’s a pregnant skeleton! But some part of me says, “aw, poor thing, I can fix her…” Both sheep are flighty, ramming into gates to try to escape us, which is suddenly making me appreciate my calm and stable flock.

The lady won’t sell just the black ewe. So I tell her, well, that other sheep has no value, as I’ll have to put a lot of feed into her to bring her back, and her lamb may not survive or thrive. So, how about I pay you $100 for the black one, and I’ll take the other one off your hands as a favor? She hems and haws, she’s got money into them in feed already, she wants to recoup her investment of helping out her friend. I come up to $150 for both, but she still doesn’t bite, she’s wanting at least $175, and then, $160.

While she’s waffling over $10 increments in price negotiations, Kirk is starting to give me the kind of look that says, “let’s get out of here! This is crazy!” He says, “it’s up to you, but I don’t think this is a good idea, we don’t have the right setup to take care of that ewe…” I waver, then realize he’s right, retract my offer and thank the lady for her time. She’s lost the sale worrying about $10, which she’ll easily dump into those sheep in feed over the next week or two. But I’m relieved that her flea market haggling gave us both enough time to realize this was a dumb idea.

On the 2 hour drive home, and later, I reflect upon this decision, and that Kirk talking me out of this purchase may have averted disaster. What if that sheep had scrapie or some other contagious disease? I could have risked the health of my entire flock, trying to save a buck on some new sheep, getting lured by superficial characteristics like color, and feeling sorry for a pathetic case that needed nursing. Saving a skinny kitten or puppy is one thing, but you can’t be a softy when it comes to livestock intended for food and profit. And had passers-by seen that animal in my field, they’d question my ability to care for my animals- not good PR!

Ok, so from now on, I think I’m going to stick to slightly more expensive, but good breeders, who have an established breeding program, registered animals, are in the SFCP or NSEP, and just generally have it together, with nice, well conditioned animals to sell. No more poodle traders for me!