I built this poultry feeder A-frame a week or so ago. I used old barn wood this time. I don’t often find ways to recycle the barn wood, because it’s so dimensionally gigantic, dense and heavy compared to modern lumber, that even the tiniest structure weighs too much. Right now, we want everything to be move-able since we don’t know where all our permanent structures are going to go. But, this worked ok: made from barn siding and roof pieces, I think it “only” weighs about 50 pounds!
As you can see, I’m sticking with the A-frame theme, I just like the way they look, how easy they go together, how stable they are in the wind, and that they use less lumber than a cube. This thing I kind of free-handed, I didn’t do any measuring, I just eyeballed how it should go together based on the size of the feeder.
My plan here was to move the duck (and soon to be chicken) feeding station out into the yard. Since the ducks are nicely conditioned to free range by day, but go into their house at night, they no longer need a feeder in their shelter. And, that means they don’t need water in there either (ducks will choke themselves if they can eat grain but have no water with which to wash it down). The end result- less mess in their night shelter, and less frequent cleaning for me to do!
I am really pleased with the way things are working out with the ducks. I worried about predation during the day, since coyotes and eagles are ever-present and ducks are pretty helpless and not too brainy. But, we’ve only had one duck disappear in daytime in the last year and a half. So, knock on wood, they seem to be reasonably safe as long as they’re penned at night. I can stand a small percentage loss, as long as the predators don’t make a habit of it!
The ducks’ free-ranging during the day offers many benefits: they need less purchased feed, they eradicate slugs, they have a healthier diet, their eggs are richer, they stay cleaner and nicer-looking, and they are happier. Though they manage to hide a few eggs from me while they’re out and about, for the most part, they lay early in the morning in their pen. So, I’m satisfied with my egg yield, and am getting enough egg buyers now that the ducks are at least breaking even. What mystery eggs I do find in the yard go into the dog food. The best part is the slug patrol: I have a horrible slug phobia, so the ducks are worth their weight in gold in keeping the yard slug-free!
Look at this girl! This is #33, the quirkiest, dorkiest, homeliest of our sheep; and also our favorite! She doesn’t take any guff from the dogs, and if there is Border Collie anywhere outside, #33 sticks to our legs like glue. She knows where the safety zone lies!
Last week I received a large order from 
Here is the electric fence charger. It’s a rechargeable 12-volt battery, and the solar panel is more of a “booster” to help get a couple more days out of each charge. It’s supposed to last a week or two between chargings. The dog learned right quick to stay away from it, she is very afraid of it. And, the sheep are really too mellow to even challenge it. So, when I’m around, I can leave it turned off. But, at night, hopefully it’ll not only ensure the sheep and the dog stay in, but should keep the coyotes out.
I love the 
The ram lamb born to the Jacob ewe on Saturday didn’t make it, sadly. As you may be able to see in the picture, both lambs were quite thin and unthrifty when they were born. I think the ewe might not have been carrying enough condition, and since I just got her, I haven’t had much time to increase her nutrition plane in preparation for lambing. The ewe lamb was the larger and more vigorous of the two.
One of the lambs born yesterday was a bummer- too weak to nurse. He fooled me for a while, because he was standing there with his head up in the udder, wagging his tail. But I finally figured out he wasn’t eating, while his sister was gaining weight and energy, he was remaining a skeleton. I tried to help him nurse late last night, and succeeded in getting a little colostrum in him and getting a decent sucking response. But by morning he was weak and cold, so he wasn’t able to stick with it.
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.
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.
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, IÂ 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. đ But then they’d get stuck in there, and brute-force their way out, wreaking havoc with my petite lamb hut.
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.
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!
Hereâs how I think itâs going to work integrating the LGD into the mix. Iâm not confident that all will play out as planned. But Iâll have to be flexible and adjust the plan as I see how things are going, because I donât really know how things will go!