Last lamb of spring and a lot of grass

 

 This little cutie is the final lamb born in our 2012 spring lambing season. Although I caught her mama sniffing her in this shot, something went wrong in their bonding process. Brian found the lamb at the morning feeding on May 11, but she had been claimed by another ewe. Despite penning the lamb and her mama in a jug for over a week and holding the ewe still so the lamb could nurse three to four times a day, the ewe never did catch on to what her role is supposed to be. She had a large udder, but very little milk, and she never let the lamb nurse on her own. The oddest part about this to me is that this ewe successfully raised a lamb last year - she is supposed to know the drill! So, we bottle-fed the lamb for a couple of weeks and have now transitioned her to drinking when she wants to from a bucket hanging in the creep area. She is growing very well, and at just over three weeks of age she is drinking about 1 quart per day of milk replacer and nibbling on corn and soybean meal.

Final stats on the spring lambing: 

Total lambs born: 70; girls win 36 to 34

Total ewes that lambed: 44; there were too many mature ewes that did not end up lambing, not sure what happened there, but the rams will all be getting breeding soundness exams before breeding this fall. We did have some hot weather last fall that could have contributed to pregnancy losses, but there's no way for us to know for sure what went wrong. Still, 70 lambs is the most we've ever had, and there are still fall lambs to be born for this year.

 We have had quite a bit of rain and temperatures in the 90s. The grass and the lambs are growing very well. The lambs have all received their first vaccinations and most of them have received their booster shots. We vaccinate for clostridial diseases to help prevent "overeating disease" that can happen when a glut of fermentable starch is available in the intestinal tract and clostridia bacteria populations explode - they produce toxins that can kill an animal very suddenly. One more round of booster shots to go and then we'll be ready for weaning in about a month.

First cutting hay has been started with about 250 square bales tucked away in the barn and 120 round bales already rolled and sold. We have three fields of corn this year, and all are planted and sprouted. The last field was planted a week later than the other two, and the slugs have really hit it hard. Soybeans should be going in the ground any day now. The wheat is turning golden brown and will be ready in a few weeks; the rain has contributed to some fungal disease on the wheat, but it doesn't appear to have done too much damage so far.

Two batches of chickens have been hatched and dispatched. We lost a lot more from the first batch of 50 than I would like, but the second batch turned out very well. The first batch averaged 4.8 pounds of dressed weight, and the second batch was 5.1 pounds, right on target. One more batch to go, but for now I am enjoying two weeks of broiler freedom. I love to eat chicken, so I won't stop raising them, but they are dirty, smelly birds. I do want to make some updates to the watering system. I had it figured out and then we changed coops (more on that another time) and while I thought I had found a good new system, it turns out it didn't work very well for broilers.

 The lambs have definitely figured out what the creep feeder is for! This pasture creep feeder is handy because we can pull it around the field easily but the grain is protected from weather and rodents. However, I think the design of the gate is terrible. We have a different type of creep gate in the barn and it is a much smarter design. On this pasture creep, the adjustable bars that can be moved to make the holes bigger or smaller are attached to the frame with a bolt. When the lambs enter or leave the creep the bars twist on the bolt, which, as you might expect, loosens the bolt. That wouldn't be a big problem, but the ewes like grain a lot too, and they are always nosing about hoping to get a scrap. So, when one of the bars is loose, the ewes can get into the feeder. Invariably that ends with a ewe dragging the feeder around the field because she can't figure out how to get out of the feeder, even though she had no trouble getting in. Now compare this to the other creep gate, which has plastic sleeves on rods, and the plastic rolls on the metal - no bolt to wiggle free. I don't think we can modify the pasture creep gate to work exactly the same way, but my thought at this point is to add some pvc sleeves to the bars and see if that will help take some of the pressure off of the bolts. Always tinkering...

The garden is mostly planted, although we don't have our peppers out yet. We're going to be counting on selling peppers right up through the end of the produce auction's season, and maybe we'll capture some of the late market after other people's peppers have fizzled out for the season. We also still have potatoes to get in the ground, but at least those are just for our use. All the plastic is laid and ready to go, we just have to get a window between the rain and our work schedules that lines up to give us enough time to get it done.

Much more to write about including Chicken Coop 6.0, bird nests, and a flower tour, but that will have to wait for my next post. 

Lambs everywhere you look!

Lamb count: 54 bouncing babies
Sets of twins: 20
Sets of triplets: 2
Singles: 12

We are through the biggest part of lambing season, still plenty of ewes to go, but most of the ewes that settled to their first breeding have now lambed. The final round of lambings will be more sporadic and will stretch out over the next month. Without actually going through the records to add everything up, it appears Dalton is making a very good showing in his second year on the job. We have had lots of adorable speckle-faced lambs. And lots of twins... life is good!

We finished shearing April 2 by doing our yearling ewes, the recently purchased Dorset yearlings, and our new Dorset ram. We confirmed that several of our home grown yearlings were bred and making udders. They have been added to the ladies in waiting group at the barn. We also discovered one of the Dorset yearlings was a wether, not a ewe, so he joined the last group of 2011 market lambs on the trailer April 3. All of the not-bred sheep are now at our farm in New Hope. The Dorsets and Dorpers are in one group, and we'll be turning rams in with them very soon. Our home grown replacements are in another group, eating grass and packing on the pounds so they will be primed for breeding in the fall. We shooed the laying hens out of the winter coop and into their summer quarters, just in time for the arrival of a new batch of broiler chicks April 2. We start the broilers in the winter coop so they have some good protection while they are tiny. In another week they too will hit the grass in their own little chicken huts.

And in the garden, the peas are up and the garlic looks fantastic. The tomato seeds I started have sprouted and will need to be moved to individual pots soon. We planted strawberries in some new raised beds and finally built a trellis for the grape vines over the weekend.

Here's a look at what's been happening over the last two weeks:

73 and her lambs: 73 and 34 lambed almost exactly at the same time. 73 had a single while 34 had triplets. I took the oldest of 34's lambs and tried to get 73 to adopt her. The lamb recognizes 73 as her mama, but 73 only tolerates the lamb. Thankfully, this is an aggressive and creative ewe lamb. She has figured out how to nurse even though 73 isn't thrilled about it. In this picture the lambs are outside of the jug because they learned it was safer there when 73 was chasing the little orphan lamb around. The whole family is now out of the jug and doing well in the mixing pen, even with a bigger area and more traffic. I have seen the lamb continue her antics of stealing milk at every opportunity, she's a fast little sucker!

 The primary strategy for stealing milk from a mama who doesn't want to share - sneak up behind her, especially when mama is preoccupied nursing her own lamb or eating.

 We docked tails and put ear tags in a group of 27 lambs on April 1. Then those lambs and their mamas went out into a large section of pasture. They seem to be enjoying the fresh air and green grass!

 This is the first year we have had a creep for the lambs. There is one set of twins in particular who love to sleep in the protected lamb-only zone inside the creep. It doesn't seem like they are eating much grain though.

And now for a tulip tour:

Chicken butchering day

Killing chickens isn't a lot of fun, but it is necessary if you want to eat delicious home-raised chicken. Friday was butchering day, and Brian's buddy Pete and his son Austin came up to help us kill and process 100 broilers. Having done chickens the "old fashioned" way as a kid and once or twice since then, I can heartily recommend investing in some technology to make the day much more pleasant. Here's a guided tour of our backyard chicken processing setup.

First, Austin and Brian caught the chickens and put 24 at a time into a cart attached to the four-wheeler. Austin kept them in the pen while Brian took care of loading them in the kill cones and bleeding them. Although a chopping block and chickens running around after their heads are cut off make for entertaining (if a bit grisly) tales, it is messy and not that appealing. This kill cone rig is great. Brian makes two small cuts to nick the veins on either side of the neck and allow the blood to drain completely. The cones hold the chickens still so that any flopping is contained and there is no bruising of the carcass. Blood is collected into the vat below the cones and later added to the compost pile.

Four at a time, birds are placed in shackles for dipping in the propane-powered scald tank. They are swished around for about a minute at just the right temperature. Getting a proper scald is extremely important to ensure good plucking.

Brian times the scald and tests the wing feathers to be sure the birds have spent enough time in the hot water. Once they are properly scalded, all four birds go into the plucker. This is the most amazing machine! I have plucked my share of chickens by hand, and I still don't understand how this works, but it does. Oh does it! The tub rotates and the combination of rubber fingers and running water strips all the feathers and even the little hairs off of the chickens. In about a minute these chickens go from fully feathered to completely clean.

I tell you, it's amazing! From the plucker, the chickens go to the evisceration table. Here Pete removed the head, feet, and intestines and separated out the gizard, liver, and heart. I finished cleaning out any remaining tissue, gave them a final rinse and quality check and then dropped them into an ice bath for rapid cooling. We then packed them on ice. Quite a tiring day, but a satisfying one. Thanks to Pete and Austin for all of their help!

Walk in the country with me

I love that Keith Urban song. Walkin' the country... yesterday I took a nice afternoon walk to visit the various critters and take some photos. So this will be a photo-heavy post. We've had two weeks of wonderful, soft rain that has really made the grass grow. You can see how tall it is compared to the sheep. The no-so-little-anymore lambs can't even see over the grass. It is fun to listen to them call for their mamas and watch them find their way back together. Each ewe and lamb has a unique baa.

This is Antonio, one of our two guard llamas.

The broiler chicks are growing even faster than the grass. We still have them in the starter house because of all the rain, but in the next couple of days they should be able to get out into their huts in the field. Here's one of the plump little guys.

The laying hens are adapting well to being on pasture. We haven't had any trouble getting them into the coop at night and their feathers are growing back after the constant assault from the roosters (the roosters are in their own bachelor pad now).

The final critter for this post is Jackson; he looks as worn out by the day as I was!