Author: fourfarmdogs

Hershey is Liberated

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On Monday, Hershey the Ram had been locked up for 16 days. I decided to let him go; it should have been long enough with him locked up such that I can differentiate his lambs from the other ram’s by their birth dates.

As a precaution, I tied him up inside his little pen so he couldn’t cause any  trouble. Then I had Maggie help me put the ewes inside his pen too, so I could trim their hooves. She had a little trouble getting around them, she is SO sticky right now; when she makes contact with the sheep, she just locks up and stares. But she finally got them lined up nicely to the pen opening, then I had her lay down and hold her side, while I nudged them in. Nice! I never quit appreciating how helpful the dogs are.

I cleaned up all their feet, and set the whole lot free. Hershey ran to meet his ladies with glee. I let Maggie pick them up one more time, and bring them to me in a good-sized outrun. She got stuck at 9:00 like she always does, but with some encouragement, she got around them and brought them to their grain pans. The ram moved for her–I wasn’t sure if he would judging by his aggressiveness in the pen. But it turns out he works fine in the open.

So, let the rendesvous begin-time to make lambs!

Hanging Gates

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These pictures have been sitting around for a while, as I finished hanging gates in the first field months ago. But, since I had a hard time developing a strategy for hanging big gates, I thought I’d share what I came up with.

The first time I tried it, I found the gates to be very awkward and unwieldy to handle. Trying to  hold them up to the posts and just mark where they should go does not work! Especially if you are doing it solo and don’t have a helper, which is often the case for me. I needed a more accurate system. Uneven ground increased the challenge: I prefer my gates to be fairly low to the ground so the dogs can’t get under, but they need to be high enough to swing easily, even over time as they sag.

What I found worked well was to use a “string level” to determine where I wanted to position the bottom of the gate. These are inexpensive tiny levels that hang on a piece of string, as shown in the picture.

They aren’t perfectly accurate, but if you position it roughly in the middle of the stretch of string, it’s good enough guidance to let you visualize where the bottom of the gate will be. Once I decided where the bottoms of each gate post went, I marked that on the posts. Then I measured up to where the bottom bracket should be in relation to the bottom of the gate posts, and drilled a hole for that bracket’s hanging bolt. From that bolt, I’d measure upwards to determine the position of the top bracket’s bolt. Here is a picture of the string level marking the gate’s bottom:

The trick with most of these gate hinges is they are intended for the bolt “finials” (this is not the right word, but I’m not sure what the correct term should be…) point towards each other. This is counter-intuitive to some, and if you don’t plan right, you won’t end up being able to achieve this. The biggest reason for them pointing towards each other is: if, for example, a strong cow got her horns hooked in the gate and pulled upwards, you wouldn’t want her to be able to slide the gate right off the bolts. So, having the top “finial” point downwards prevents the gate from being removable in this fashion. (You could imagine that it makes it less trivial for thieves to break in too, but it’s still simple for them to break in: they can just unscrew the hinge bolts, or snip right through your fence wire!)

To make sure you can have the top finial pointing downward, it’s important to place the top bolt high enough that you can have the hinge positioned lower on the gate that the bolt’s “finial” and then slide it up onto the “finial”. Err on the side of putting the bolt too high than too low. Once the hinge bracket is on the finial,  you tighten the bolts down, and the weight of the gate is actually pulling mostly sideways against this “finial” (thus it doesn’t need to sit “down” on an upward-pointing “finial”- only the bottom hinge needs to do that). I had a couple of cases where I didn’t plan right, or had another object in the way, and ended up with the top “finial” pointing upwards. It turns out, it works OK as long as the gate is a big one– the weight of the gate still “binds” it plenty on the hinge bolt to where even a lot of force won’t slide it up and off the bolts. But, this would not be true for smaller gates.

Here are two gates where I was pretty happy with their final hanging height and smooth ability to swing in both directions. I had one gate opening that ended up being too narrow, so the gate only opens inward. I can live with that, but much prefer them to go both ways. It just makes it convenient to get vehicles and animals in and out when the gate can move in the direction that’s most accommodating to the flow of movement.

In case my use of the word “finial” isn’t clear, here is a photo of the part of the bolt I’m referring to (in the red circle). In this photo, the hinge and bolt are positioned as they are when you purchase the gate, such that they won’t fall off during transport. You have to swing the hinge around 180°, which can be tricky. I find that I need to bring several extra tools down to the field for this purpose: a big screwdriver for leverage, some channel locks, extra pliers and a hammer. It seems it’s worse on these mesh gates, as sometimes the hinge gets hung up on the wire. On some I had to completely remove it and then re-attach it in the other direction. It takes a lot of force to bend them enough to get them off, and then narrow them back up again to re-bolt them in their final position.

Salt Lick Holder

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My sheep book had handy advice for making a salt holder, this is a modification of the book’s design, because I had an extra piece of 1×8 laying around. You just cut off a square from the end of the board, split the rest of the board in half, and cut those two pieces into sides and angled edges to hold the box up. Nifty!

The sheep immediately went for their new salt, they seem to like to snack on it midway through their grain meals.

Grain Line and More Hoof Trimming

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This was what I was going for with the grain feeding and ewe “flushing”- a perfect line with each ewe eating out of her own bucket. That way I can manage how much each one eats, and prevent the big ewes from hogging most of the grain. It only took about a week of effort for them to learn to come for grain, and seek out their own bowls. The bowls break my “no plastic” rule a little bit, but these were cheap paint buckets from Home Depot.

I worked on the ram’s hooves tonight, they also needed some work. They had some splits and pockets, but were generally having a healthy response. I prefer to see them a little cracked and dried rather than moist and soft. Bacteria has a harder time attacking in the former. Here is one hoof, with one side trimmed, the other side not. You can see how the sides are curling over, and need to be removed and flattened so they don’t create a place for material to compact.

 Here are the hoof trimmers I like to use. Though even garden pruners will do, I like these straight and pointy cutters. They can really dig in and open up tiny crevices.

A Little Play, a Little Work

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We went out to breakfast today, took in an antique car show in town, then worked on Kirk’s house some more. I cleaned out most of the kitchen cabinets, the microwave and the stove top. Kirk reseeded the grass, and packed up some things.

Later at home, I put metal roofing on top of the sheep shelter in the field (pic coming soon) and then we tackled trying to fix the pocket doors in the living room. We’d really like to get these working, so we can shut the dogs out of the room with the future-nice-furniture! The pocket doors are beautiful, but unfortunately, one has lost one of its sets of rollers so does not travel well on the track. We took a lot of molding off, and got it half re-attached once, but it later got stuck and came off again. We are  having trouble understanding exactly how it goes together and works, it’s too hard to see in there. I think we may need to remove  yet more molding and find a way to take the entire door out, so we can see what we’re doing in re-attaching the roller. I would have thought I’d find some great blog or website somewhere with detailed advice on this subject, but the Web hasn’t helped me today!

Flushing Ewes

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So far, I have one book on sheep husbandry, “Raising Sheep the Modern Way” by Paula Simmons. The women who sold me sheep to me agreed it was a good book. It advises “flushing” ewes before breeding, which is a method of giving them ever-increasing amounts of grain the 17 days prior to when you expose them to the ram. Research has shown this makes them more likely to drop two eggs and give multiple births.

But, when I’ve asked around, I’ve learned a lot of people don’t bother with this and still get multiple births. And one lady I met who does do flushing often gets singleton lambs. So, I’ve waffled on whether or not to do it.

The nice lady at the feed store co-op had me talked out of it, as she’s one of the ones who has luck without it. But, then I started thinking it would be nice to grain-train the ewes, for moments when I don’t want to use a dog to get the sheep to follow me. And, poor Hershey the ram is stuck in his pen, eating hay, for another week and a half. So, I bought some grain.

It turns out Hershey is already grain-trained and will follow me anywhere for it and eat out of my hand. The ewes know what a shaking bucket sound means, but they won’t come. They wait until I’ve left the bucket and am long gone. So, though I think I’d like to flush them, I have no way to control how much each one of them gets.

So, I’ve settled for leaving a little bit of grain out in six small buckets by the ram pen. And, feeding Hershey out of my hand so that he stays acting like a good boy.

To Rent Out or Sell

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We have a bit of dilemma in what to do with Kirk’s house, now that we’re married and have settled upon living life on the farm. Kirk has a really nice house, I almost wish we could trade them on their lots! It is an historic home in a charming old neighborhood, with beautifully refinished fir floors and mountain views.

Though it’s maybe a good “problem” to have, we don’t know what we should do with the second house– sell it or rent it out. The pro’s of renting seem to be the potential for profit over time. We do know people who have done really well as landlords. But, this profit assumption relies on the real estate market going up, and with the current economic uncertainty, there are no guarantees there. The con’s of renting are the headaches of being a landlord, and we’re not sure we want to take on that extra stress. And we’d have a lot to learn.

Kirk only bought the house two years ago, so to sell it now, given the short time he’s held it and the flattening of the real estate market means probably taking a slight loss on it. But, viewing it as not just an investment, but a place to live, then having a slight net loss doesn’t seem so bad–it’s about the same overall expense as if he would have rented all this time.

We’re not fond of the real estate agent thing, so we’ll likely sell it FSBO, and that will allow us to keep more of the profit. We’ve both done that before and have had excellent success with it.

We went there today to work on the yard, it’s important to keep it looking lived-in. Kirk mowed, and I weeded the flower beds. It mostly just needs some good cleaning and some fresh paint in a few places. We’re leaning towards selling it, to have more money to invest into the farm. That means we’d best get it on the market soon, before the holiday slowdown comes. So, we’d better get crackin’!

Is that an Alligator or a Border Collie?

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And, for fun, here is a picture of Maggie, lunging out of one of the drainage ditches, attempting to snatch a piece of grass that Kirk is holding above her head. She loves this little game they play. She rushes ahead of us when we walk in the field, and waits impatiently in the water for Kirk to appear with something to throw or dangle. The bottoms of the ditches are muddy, and sometimes when she emerges, she is so head-to-toe brown with muck that you can’t even see her white blaze. But that’s more good news because then she gets to be hosed down afterwards, another favorite game of hers!

Hoof Trimming

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Monday night, I caught the lame ewe to work on her feet. I took Gene, my 5-year-old Border Collie, down to  help catch her. It took about 20 mintes to catch the ewe, both because the sheep aren’t dogged, and because Gene can act like a idiot sometimes. Her lack of confidence always manifests in squirrely behavior and the sheep figuring out they don’t need to take her seriously.

But, I do find that after she gets tired and yelled at quite a bit, she starts to settle down and work nicely. The tiredness makes her choose to work more efficiently, and me taking her self esteem down a few notches softens her demeanor so the sheep respond better to her. We got the job done; and to give her credit, I don’t think there are many farm dogs that can help single an undogged sheep in an open field! We cheated a bit by putting them into the corner, but still, it’s a trick that can’t be done by yourself without a good stock dog for sure.

So, the feet… I used to work my dogs at a place where the sheep had really bad feet, and I spent a bit of time every day I was there trimming hooves to try  to ease their discomfort and make them more workable for the dogs. A friend of mine who has an animal sciences degree showed me the basics. I find that not only do you have to create a good flat foot surface so they walk right, you have to be ruthless about hacking away diseased tissue. Making them bleed is actually good, as the blood washes out the wound and encourages fresh tissue to grow. And, you have to open up the bacteria-laden pockets to the air so they can dry out. I also find that the more you  trim, the harder the hoof works to recover, and it’ll grow very rapidly. The body wants to heal, after all.

On this girl, only her front feet were bad. Here is one hoof beforehand: you can see the side edges of the hoof curling over. This creates a pocket in which material tends to pack and retain moisture, and then works its way upwards, splitting the hoof. I thought this might be all there was, but as I trimmed, I could see that much of the hoof wall was detached, which is relatively useless. And, where there are tiny holes, if you work the points of your trimmers into those and start opening them up, usually you find lots of “stuff” in there, and a bad smell to boot.

Here is the “after” photo–I’ll take off more material in a week or so, but this was all I wanted to do in one sitting. Despite having a lot of raw, exposed tissue, she was walking better already. Before I let her go, I sprayed her feet with Shreiner’s Herbal Solution. I really like this stuff, it’s a very old-fashioned, natural wound dressing spray that I use on absolutely everything, including myself (though it’s not labeled for humans, so don’t tell them I said that! 🙂 ). I learned about it from a pig farmer, and get it at my local feed store.

We are Sheep Farmers!

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Today the sheep got dropped off. They all look very nice, except one who has hoof rot bad enough that she’s walking on her knees a lot. But, the seller did disclose that in advance, I decided to take her, since I’m pretty good at healing hoof problems and she was lower priced. It helps to have the dogs, who can hold the sheep I want to catch and treat. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to treat and handle sheep without dogs, I guess you just have to grain-train them and still do a lot of wrestling.

Here is the ram, he is six-year-old “Hershey.”

 

Here are the six ewes:

 

They are settled in well and enjoying the nice pasture. Heshey is locked up for 17 days in a mini-pen inside the pasture, the “magic number” of days to kick all of the girls back into heat. Three might already be bred, so I need to ensure that enough time passes before he covers them to be sure I know which sire goes with which lambs. The pre-bred ewes should lamb by Feb 19th, and the ones bred later won’t lamb until after March 1st.

I have yet to decide if I’m going to “flush” the ewes–grain them up until the ram is let out. Supposedly, that helps ensure twinning; but the sellers assure me these girls twin and triplet regularly just on grass. I’ll figure it out tomorrow!

I let Maggie work them just a tiny bit, just push them gently around. They were very calm, much less reactionary than I expected for non-dog-broke shep. Here she is, “meeting” the ram and doing her best to be brave and show him who’s boss! She was a little chicken, though, I’ll confess!