Last Tuesday we moved Tom to a pen by himself. Wanted to give him a rest from the girls, or is that a rest for the girls from Tom? Anyway, we moved him.
This morning we moved him back in with the girls again to give him a chance to finish up any loose ends. Will probably keep him there for another week or so then send him back to Clyde and Amber.
We worked on our new drip watering system for our big garden Saturday and yesterday. Need to get some more 20′ sections of 1/2 PVC to finish it out.
We also top dressed the area we are going to use for corn this year. Going to try some Indian corn as it was a requested item at the farmers market last fall. People use it for Halloween decorations in yards. Our corn crop last year left a LOT to be desired. It is going to be better planned and planted this year. The corn patch is about 20′x50′ so we have a lot more room.
Will get some pics when the system is done. Looks like it is going to be great though. It will use a lot less water for the amount of watering to be done. The main garden is 30×60. By using a drip system, you have a lot less evaporation than when using a sprinkler or over head system.
If it needs to be readjusted next year, it will be easier to move PVC pipes around and rotate crops.
Our garlic is about 6-8″ high now and looking real good. In the garden this year we are planning on planting: white and yellow onions, some type of peppers, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, squash of some kind, cucumber, beans, radishes, carrots, and a couple other items I don’t remember.
In the raised beds in the front will be scallions, lettuce, and the rhubarb is already coming up and looking good. The raspberry bushes are getting a slow start, but one has green showing already from the roots. We also have asparagus coming up. I have one lone current bush that is a 3 yr. old transplant. It has spread every year and gotten nice green leaves on it, but so far no currents. If we don’t get any this year, may trying to get another so it isn’t so alone.
Well that’s about all for today.
Later
April 24th, 2009
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Weather is warming up nicely. Not overly warm, upper 50’s, but still nice to be out without a coat.
When we went to do chores this morning, we patched up some damage done by the wind this last week. We lost a 4×8 sheet of plywood off back of barn. We dug that out of the sand and replaced. No real damage done, just another window for the horses.
Then on to the sheep pen. With Tom being in there and very protective of his girls, we decided to move him out of that pen to another for a bit. Easier said than done. First we had to get a rope on him. Ya Right! He had other ideas and the race (chase) was on. The expert roper in our group (cough, cough) only took 6 tries to get it on him. Then another 10 minutes chasing the end of the rope. It’s really not cool having one end of a rope, while there is a running 180-200 lb. ram on the other end going the other direction. It took 2 of us to finally get him on a short enough line that he couldn’t run. After that he walked out of that pen to the other like a gentleman.
After that fiasco was over, then we went in and did a couple minor repairs on the sheep shelter.
Then the wind started blowing and that shut down the rest of the day’s plans. Oh well, eventually the spring winds will pretty much stop, but till then, they are really nasty.
I’m sure glad I don’t wear contacts out here.
Later all
April 19th, 2009
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At least we are not totally “lambless”. Clyde and Amber had 5 little ones they were bottle feeding. A couple of them got sick, and they lost one. All the symptoms pointed to a nervous disorder brought on by trama of some kind. They sorta think the 2 grandkids had something to do with it. By trama, I don’t mean cruelty, but more like they were greatly stressed. It wasn’t intentional, but you put 2 8yr olds with a bunch of new lambs,,,,,,,they were just being kids.
Anyhow, it was treatable with injectable vitamin B 12. The one was needing a little more attention than the others and with the kids and Clyde gone for Easter, they were a little more than Amber could handle. So she asked if we would/could take the little problem one. Well, you can imagine the answer.
This little girl has a few problems, but seems to be holding her own. She is about a month old now, and not drinking near enough milk, but she is nibbling on hay, eating some sweet feed made up of cracked barley, oats, and rolled corn and drinking water from a bowl.
Up to today, we were only getting about 6 oz of milk down her in a 24 hr period. Today she took almost 8 oz in 12 hrs. She has a hard time sucking, so we have to help her a little bit by squeezing the bottle while she chews on the nipple. She had a shot of B12 yesterday and seems to be doing a little better. The end results are still unknown, but as long as she is eating and drinking and performing bodily functions, she has a chance. Time will tell.
Catch you all later
Cindy
April 14th, 2009
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Well, I think we are done waiting for new arrivals. We are convinced the ram we borrowed didn’t have the “balls” to get the job done. It is about 2+ weeks past the last date he was in with our girls. The last one “marked” should have had lambs at least 2 weeks ago.
Really pretty bummed out about this distressing turn of events. Soooo….
We now are extending hospitality to Clyde’s ram, Tom. He is a 2 yr. old and should be pretty ready to get the deed done.
I think I mentioned in an earlier post that the ram we had, had spend a month in with Clyde’s girls also. As Clyde’s babies started arriving, it was evident that the lambs didn’t belong to that ram. Clyde put Tom in with his herd after the other ram left.
The baby lambs are all Tom’s. This was decided on the arrival date of his babies. So, where does that put us? We “should” have a late summer or early fall batch of babies. We will breed back as soon as we can after lambing to get us back into the spring crop of babies for next year.
Everyone involved with this was more or less devastated at the turn of events. I guess that’s life on a farm. Drop back 1 ram and punt.
Other than that, things are perking along. We got another raised planting bed put together yesterday and getting seeds together for planting times.
Garlic that was planted last fall is coming along nicely in all beds. We also are getting ready to recover the green house. The cover got trashed over the winter and the manufacturer honored the 5 yr. warranty, AGAIN, and sent another cover for us.
A little off topic here: If anyone is looking for a new site for generating traffic needs to check out the banner below.
Time for bed here shortly, catch all later.
Cindy
April 8th, 2009
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starting to happen? We seem to have a couple ewes that are looking pretty uncomfortable with their current state of health. We have gone to a “lamb” watch every 4-6 hours.
I would expect to have some babies on the ground in the next couple days, but I have been wrong before.
Will post pictures as soon as they are available.
Cindy
March 25th, 2009
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Since we live in and area that has an abundance of sun and wind, we are seriously looking into solar power. We have just under 10 acres here in our little corner of Utah.
We are actually living on less than 1/2 of that. The rest of the land is open. It would be a good place for a solar panel farm.
If you are interested in getting a free estimate for solar related construction, or would just like more information, check out this site.
Cindy
March 23rd, 2009
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This guy sits in a tree a little ways from the house. Sometimes in the morning there are 2 sitting there.
We tried to get a little closer and he didn’t like it and flew the coop.
Cindy
March 18th, 2009
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but it’s still early in the day. Not even noon here yet. We spread a bale of straw in the lambing jug and the shelter. We thought maybe the power of suggestion might prevail. None of the girls look overly anxious to welcome the lamb stork.
We took the tarp off the cow shelter as it was pretty well shredded from the wind. The tarps covering the hay stacks are about ready to come off also. They also took a beating, but not really shredded.
We keep the hay covered for the winter so it doesn’t get wet and moldy. Moldy hay can cause colic in horses, but can be fed to the cows and sheep because they have 4 stomachs and can handle moldy hay well. Cows and sheep are ruminants. That means the food goes into the first stomach (ruman) and is softened. It becomes cud at that time and is further transferred to the other series of stomachs. So essentially the mold never gets thru their systems.
So much for the lesson of the day lol.
Still only in the day watch mode for the sheep. Sigh!!!!!!!
More later
Cindy
March 17th, 2009
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I think this is a Long Eared Owl. Was sitting in our trees next to the vehicles. He was very patient while taking pictures.
Oh and we are still just on day watch for our sheep, as it looks like none of them are in a big hurry to have the stork visit just yet.
Cindy
March 16th, 2009
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Clyde and Amber had another little one get deserted. Mom had no milk and refused to accept her baby, so they have another “house baby” to feed.
They were going to be gone for noon feeding so they called and asked if we could take care of it. Naturally we jumped at the chance. They brought over the bottles and a canning jar of Lamb replacer for us.
Here are the results:
If there is anything cuter than a lab puppy, it has to be a new lamb.
March 15th, 2009
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In reply to a comment left yesterday: Yes our animals are safe and sound. We were told when we first moved here that a Coyote will not go anywhere that he is hemmed in. In other words, they will not go into an enclosure or fenced in area. I am not taking that as gospel, but so far we haven’t had any problems.
The fact that we have 5 dogs that are outside a lot may have something to do with not having Coyotes real close to the house also. The dogs don’t have free roam of property. We have never seen Coyote tracks in the snow either, and we do keep a watch.
The last 2 may be a little fuzzy due to the zoom, the wind, and it was cold.
Later
Cindy
March 14th, 2009
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As of tonight, we officially go on our late evening lamb watch. Boy Oh Boy !
The pictures below were taken earlier this afternoon out our front door. This is the first Coyote we have seen this close to the house.
Cindy
March 13th, 2009
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Not much going on here yet. We are on daily lamb watch, will go on the night watch in about 4-5 days.
Lambing continues at Clyde and Amber’s and for most part going good. They had a “springer” (a lamb born last spring) that had twins. She started off real good and was nursing both of them. Then for some reason, she booted one of them out. She refused to let it nurse and head butted it away when it came up to her.
Clyde’s 8 yr old grand daughter is living with them, so they gave her something to do. They took the little guy in the house, warmed him up and their Grand daughter started bottle feeding him. He is doing great.
Baby with adorable face markings
Mom and sister of the one above
The abandoned baby, it's mother and brother
Abandoned baby with the horse
The horse, Patches, is in the pen right next to the sheep pen. She was so attentive when the babies started being born. It seems she sensed something was not just right with this one. Yesterday I took this baby over to the gate for Patches to investigate. She was so soft and gentle while sniffing the baby.
As I was leaving, Patches started going crazy. She ran around the pen, bucked, whinnied, pawed at the fence and looked like she was contemplating jumping the fence. She watched the baby walking behind me and continued to carry on.
After we got back to the “staging” area, she never took her eyes off the baby. To watch interaction of other animals when babies are born is very interesting. We witnessed that when our calf was born. The cow pen had the attention of all the sheep and all 3 of our horses. The chickens even got louder than normal.
Catch u’all tomorrow
Cindy
March 9th, 2009
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Mom went in for her heart cath today (I thought it was going to be an angioplasty) and everything is A-OK. Nothing has changed in regards to her heart in the last 5 yrs. Phew. But that didn’t solve her problem so we will call her Dr. tomorrow and set an appointment for an upper GI ( think that is what it is when they refer to using a “scope”) But as far as my thinking, the heart was the worst case scenerio.
Clyde's 2 little heifers
Heifers moms
Mom and Baby
These are Hereford’s and they are just as BIG as they look in the pictures. And the heifers are as cute as a bug in a rug.
Have a few more pictures of them in the gallery found here
Cindy
March 5th, 2009
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Check this little guy out. He was born sometime after 10pm Tuesday evening. This isn’t our’s, it’s one of Clyde and Ambers. About 5 days early according to their calculations. But they were on lamb watch and checking about every 2 hours thru the night. On the midnight check, he was already up, dried off and nursing. So it was born after the 10pm check
Here he is with his proud momma. Still a little unsteady on his feet, but is getting it done.
Here is another Ewe that is due soon also, just in case you couldn’t tell lol.
We are officially on lamb watch at our place also. Just daily checks thru the day right now. Will go on the night watch in another week probably.
And on that happier note, will catch you tomorrow. I have a couple pictures of Clyde’s 2 little heifer calfs that are about 3 weeks old or so.
Cindy
March 4th, 2009
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I think I mentioned a week or so about Clyde and Amber’s Ewe that was due the first, but went down almost 3 weeks ago and they hadn’t been able to get her up to stand. They moved her from the pasture to the sheep shelter and she continued to eat and drink, just not get up.
A couple days ago she started getting weaker, and not moving a lot and not resisting when Clyde and Amber would rolled her over everyday.
Today we stopped over to see if she lambed yesterday. Amber came out and said, “how did you know I needed and OB team”. Thus started our experience for the day. (if you are expecting a happy ending, don’t finish reading this)
To say this was a dilemma is an understatement. They were going to loose the ewe eventually no matter what. They would loose the babies also. We discussed the situation, and how we could help if needed.
The decision was made to put the ewe out of her misery and try to save the babies. Amber is a nurse so she decided she would take care of the babies if they were still alive. Clyde didn’t think they were. We decided to try anyway.
Shari and I came home and got our coveralls on and boots and our lambing kit and went back over. Everyone was ready to start. Clyde put the ewe down. Basically I did a ” C ” section on her. Everyone knows what that is so I won’t go into details. I might mention here that Amber made 3 phone calls to area vets while Shari and I were home gathering things up, and couldn’t find any of them that could come out, or even talk to her.
I found the first lamb and it was alive, but didn’t feel real strong. I delivered it to Amber who was waiting with a towel. I found a second one and handed that one to Shari who was waiting with a towel also. The second one was in the same physical shape as the first.
We cleared mucus from their mouth and noses and rubbed them vigorously with the towels. The first one was breathing but in gasps. That eventually stopped and he was breathing but not real well. Shari and Clyde were working on the second one with the same results.
We decided they were about a week premature and the lungs weren’t fully developed yet, and the procedure of coming thru the birth canal with the contractions to help with the breathing part was missing so they were having a hard time clearing their lungs. Their little bodies also felt very, ahhh, I guess disconnected is the best word here. They felt like little rag dolls.
We worked on the little things for almost 2 hours before we had no heart beat. Chest massages, mouth to mouth, nose to nose etc. We used syringes to help clear mucus, and to blow air into them.
Looking back on the experience, as we often do, there wasn’t anything that could have been done differently.
Did we feel badly, certainly. Did we feel we did everything we could? Yes. When you think about what would have happened if the mom died during the night, the little ones would have also. We tried to give them a chance. I think the cards were stacked against them from the start.
I really hate to refer to this as a learning experience, but it was. It just would have been so much better if the ending had been different.
Their next ewe should lamb in a few days. Hopefully that will go better than this one did.
Will keep everyone posted.
Cindy
March 2nd, 2009
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Whoo Hoo, 62 degrees here today.
We got a couple “need to be done” things done outside today. The little man gate at the barn got replaced. The full sized door also got put back on. Last week on a very windy day, the wind caught the door as Shari went to feed the horses in the morning and away it went, almost taking Shari with it. Oh well, crap happens. It’s all better now though.
We also got more hay down and re-secured tarps on sheep and cow hay. Supposed to have some more high winds tomorrow, and don’t want to try chasing tarps down.
Our neighbors, Clyde and Amber have a Ewe due today, haven’t talked to them to find out if she had them or not. Will check tomorrow, and will post here maybe with some pictures.
Till tomorrow,
Cindy
March 1st, 2009
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It’s supposed to be decent weather and temperature wise today. That means time to get outside and do a little fixing.
Have to replace the bird netting that covers the outside area around the chicken coop. Our new birds don’t realize that it Should be there and a couple have gone on a walkabout. They also don’t realize that they are at a nice tender age for the Bald Eagles and the many Hawks we have around here.
We found a bunch of little feather all over the driveway next to the Avalanche yesterday. Some little sparrow had a rude awakening and didn’t get both eyes open fast enough. ( wondered why that hawk was looking very satisfied with himself). So bird netting is first on the list today.
Next on the list is replacing the man gate that goes from the corral to the inside of the horse barn. The horses almost have it chewed off. We got a 4′ metal gate that will slow them down bunches. (lets see them chew thru that).
The tarps that cover the hay stack took a real beating in the last 2 days of high winds. They have to be resituated and retied.
And,,,anything else we can find that isn’t gonna take money and an army to fix.
Have a nice weekend.
Cindy
February 28th, 2009
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And,,,the verdict is in.
The test wasn’t real clear, but they saw a little area near her previous bypass. They want her to have an angioplasty. The Dr’s office was going to call the hospital to have them check their schedule for next Tuesday.
If they find a blockage, they will put a stint in. They said she should be in one day and out the next. The last time she had a stint put in, it was a little over a week before she got out. (she doesn’t believe in doing things the easy way)
We have been telling her that the symptoms she was having were pretty much the same as when her first stint started getting blocked. She kept saying it wasn’t. (once a mom always a mom, what’s an adult child to do, sigh)
Anyhow, that the scoop, and will know more next Tuesday hopefully. We haven’t heard back from the hospital yet for a time or even the day.
Catch ya all later
Cindy
February 27th, 2009
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Mom had a DR’s appointment today. I didn’t know about it till late yesterday afternoon. She went in for a Stress Test. She can’t do a normal, treadmill test, she has to do the nuclear one. The do an injection that simulates the stress on the heart. She only has about 12% of her heart functional, not a lot of room to stress it.
After these tests she never feels very well and needs help even walking. This lasts for about 1 hr. Then she starts feeling better. Since she hasn’t been feeling good for about 3 weeks, and after a trip to the ER Saturday, the ER Dr. told her to go get this done.
She has been sick to her stomach and not eating. So the next test will be with a scope to check her esophagus to see if there is something there that is causing problems. Sooo, next Dr’s appt is next Tuesday.
I am trying to get a new blog up, and having problems with the db. I would have thought after so many WP installs, I would have this down pat by now. Oh well, its empty yet so can delete and reinstall as needed. Second try as soon as I get done here.
later all
Cindy
February 26th, 2009
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