Misfitmorgan's Journal - That Summer Dust

[HomeOnTheRange]

Very nice hoop house! I am hoping to get some caterpillar tunnels so I can grow year round. Your place looks great.

 

[misfitmorgan]

So that new "pasture" I keep talking about, This is what it used to look like aka the pasture is behind me in this picture.

This is what the goats did to it. In roughly 3 weeks, they are currently walking down all the brush , breaking the trunks and stripping the bark. They do get some hay to supplement but honestly are not that interested in it.

This is one of the bigger actual trees they stripped the bark from, you can see their temporary camper top shelter in the backround and some of the goats.

 

[Bruce]

It is nice and only cost us $800-900 for a 12x32 hoop house.

Wow, great price!!

 

[farmerjan]

Nice high tunnel. I would like to have one like that for the layers in the winter too. It would make an awesome "greenhouse" for plant starting in the spring.... but then the chickens?????
I feel for you on the plants. Our last frost date here is around May 10-15th.... one year we had 2 nights of 26 on Memorial day weekend. The one local greenhouse/plant center was overrun by people that following week trying to find replacement plants. I had just gotten my garden plowed that year, and hadn't gotten anything in it the week before, had bought started plants and all.... so I was so very fortunate....
We got down to 44 last night, it was chilly. Especially after days in the 80's....

 

[Baymule]

Those goats are bulldozers on hooves! That is an instance where their destructive nature is welcomed. We pass by a place every once in awhile that started out as a wild tangle with barely a strip to put up a fence. Enter the goats. Two years later, the plentiful trees are goat trimmed 5-6 feet up, even from the road as we zip by, we can see through the property and now can see their house. Nice place.

 

[misfitmorgan]

Wow, great price!!

Thats the price you get when you put the kit together yourself instead of ordering a pre-made kit. It even has 4ft spacing on the ribs for snow load vs the 5ft everyones standard kit has....then giving you the option to upgrade to 4ft for an extra $XXX. It survived snow all winter, it slides off well and has survived 45-55mph gusts without any issue. Very pleased with it.

Nice high tunnel. I would like to have one like that for the layers in the winter too. It would make an awesome "greenhouse" for plant starting in the spring.... but then the chickens?????
I feel for you on the plants. Our last frost date here is around May 10-15th.... one year we had 2 nights of 26 on Memorial day weekend. The one local greenhouse/plant center was overrun by people that following week trying to find replacement plants. I had just gotten my garden plowed that year, and hadn't gotten anything in it the week before, had bought started plants and all.... so I was so very fortunate....
We got down to 44 last night, it was chilly. Especially after days in the 80's....

Basically our plan to get around that is build two more hoop tunnels. Summer time hoop tunnels and winter time hoop tunnels. We can swap them, plant, then put them back in for winter. We are today getting a nice used shed, that will be the layer chicken coop for their summer shelter but the turkeys will still use the high tunnels and meat birds will too. Then in winter when the layer are not laying they get the high tunnel. The grass here was growing and green in the tunnel the end of march, the outside grass didnt start growing until late april this year because of the cold spring. So it should def work for extending our growing season.

The new sheep/goat barn is planned to be this same concept but bigger and on wood pony walls. The new barn is planned to be 20ftx36ft Its basically going to be a homemade barn like Babs with the center height being around 12ft tall and swapping out the transparent greenhouse plastic for the opaque white plastic.

We are not happy about the plants, We called our friends and they set aside a flat of tomato plants for us to pick up today, We will also grab a second flat of peppers so will end up just 1 flat short of what we had.

Those goats are bulldozers on hooves! That is an instance where their destructive nature is welcomed. We pass by a place every once in awhile that started out as a wild tangle with barely a strip to put up a fence. Enter the goats. Two years later, the plentiful trees are goat trimmed 5-6 feet up, even from the road as we zip by, we can see through the property and now can see their house. Nice place.

They are, they are doing a good job in such a short time. Dont ever get your place clear cut....that mess of sticks and branches, stumps and reject trucks all over and what you are left with. The previous owner apparently also liked to hide trash in the woods so we keep finding those "treats". Having the tractor is going to be a big help clearing that mess all out.

 

[misfitmorgan]

So not sure if I mentioned it but DH brought me home a shed on memorial day. Someone in the next little town over had a 10x12 shed they wanted removed from their newly purchased property. So DH loaded it up and brought it home for a chicken coop for me instead of building the chickens another high tunnel. I'm pretty happy with it. We have used metal roofing we will be putting over the shingles since they are no longer doing their job of keeping water out. The front of the shed buy the door needs the bottom half of the osb replaced and there are shelves inside that need ripped out(with plywood on them that we will for fixing the osb. Then a coat of paint, install skids with a chain, nest boxes, two small vents, a recycled window, roost poles, a light(inside and out) then put up the chicken yard and it will be done. Pretty good for a almost free chicken coop and saves us the two weekend days it would take to do the hoop house as well as the $800+ for materials.
Here are some not so great pictures of the shed.

We went to the auction yesterday and took our little buck kid. He weighed 67lbs after being confined overnight, so probly 73lbs before his overnight stress/no feed. He sold for $170 which we are happy with because locally $125-150 is all we would have gotten. He was the first animal sold for the auction which wasnt grest because there were 18 goats for sale which they announced and I guess people thought there might be some better options coming. There was a 101lb buck that went 3rd and got $210 but he was a diary breed cross. So we sat thru almost the entire auction and kept out bidder numbers to ourselves.....until the calves came out. So effectively we turn our little buck goat into 3 calves and still left with $31 cash from the bucks sale. Overall a good day at the auction, we got rid of a buck we didnt want or need and got 3 more bull calves.

So far some good some bad. The black and white one is doing fine and bottle trained. The little brown one is very young maybe 3-4 days old and not doing so great. He took a bottle ok last night but wasnt interested this morning. It could be that the time was just to soon for a second bottle as it was only 7hrs later. It is possible he may not make it which we knew when we bought him, he was $17. We gave him electrolytes so we shall see. The white and brown one is doing great, is bucket trained already, and is already eating hay. He is the heaviest at 71lbs, the black and white one is 64lbs and the little brown one is 41lbs.

We are planning on taking out lambs in next week or the week after depending on prices and how they look. A little more weight on them will not hurt our sale prices. We will probly bring home more calves, when we go to sell the sheep. The only big downside of this idea of buying auction calves and selling them as started calves or light steers is it means we are no longer exempt from TB testing and movement restrictions. I'm sure our local USDA lady will be calling us today to let us know we have to move to the other category and when we need to do our TB testing. In the eyes of the local USDA we are now officially cattle/cow farmers. We also have a deal with a guy down the road to take any of his calves he doesnt want to deal with.....he raises black angus. He said he has a few a year, usually not more then 5 but that is 5 free black angus calves we just need to pay for milk replacer, he will make sure they get colostrum for us. We are thinking we can carry about 10 bottle calves max at a time, and 2-5 weaned calves over 300lbs depending on our hay yield this year.. To that end we will likely take one of our bigger steers to the auction and keep the other to grow out for slaughter.

In other news....Ivy's light colored daughter had twins yesterday. One boy one girl, both have some spots and look to be doing well. She is being a good mom so far. I will see about getting pictures for you guys.

 

[Baymule]

Sounds like a good trade/auction to me! Hope the brown one makes it.

 

[misfitmorgan]

We lost the brown calf on Saturday. He would not stop scouring even with treatment, he did not want to eat even from the night we brought him home. He drank 1 bottle that night and it took 40 minutes. We tube fed him all the rest and we knew his odds were not looking good even Thursday morning.

We went to an auction Saturday in hopes of some hay equipment......nope it all went really high. We did get a 100gal water trough for our calves and two 5 gallon waters for our poultry at a good deal though.

Saturday we also picked up our new buck kid. I really wanted a spotted kid but DH talked me into a tri-color really nice looking boy. The breeding buck from the place we got his...omg! He is the thickest Boer I have ever seen in person. I mean he was absolutely massive......he looked a lot like this but the traditional red and slightly more height.

So really hoping we can use this buck to add width/meat to our kids, then cross back over to our spotty buck who is not so thick for the spots I want. Basically we will just keep swapping their kids for a couple gens until I get those spots locked in good then switch the bucks out. I would like my next buck to be a tiger spotted but we shall see. The new buck kid and Jupiter are currently living with the lambs and seem to be adjusting ok. The buck has called for his mom for 2 days, hopefully today is the last day as that pen very close to our living room, like 15ft away and he is LOUD! Jupiter wanted nothing to do with that "alien" for the first few hours, now they hang out most of the time as the lambs stay in their own group.

We got all the new tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos replanted, not sure if I mentioned it. Then last night we put in the snow peas, sugar snap peas, potatoes, pickling cukes and slicing cukes. Tonight should be corn, dill, garlic, shallots, horseradish, pumpkins, squash, and maybe a few other things. Not sure what I can find local for cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and brussels sprouts but if I can find the plants I will put those in too. Less plants/garden this year then we have done in the past, which suits me just fine.

We wanted to get more outside stuff done over the weekend but the weather tried to murder us. It was 94F saturdy and sunday....which is pretty dang warm for spring for us. A week and a half ago it was in the low 50s and forecasted to be in the 60-70s for the rest of the month.

The new spotty twins are doing well, much less spotted then Jupiter but healthy and mom is doing a fantastic job!! She keeps them in the brush most of the time near her nest area she made and brings them out to the rest of the herd for 30-60mins a few times a day.

The lambs are putting on weight very quickly with the creep feeder up and full of sweet feed. The ewes are also filling back out fast now that lambs have been pulled off. We may sell our rams and look for replacements, not sure yet. We do like them but feel like we need some new blood in the herd. So far I have not seen any good rams advertised for sale though for replacements so we will have to wait until we see something we like.

 

[misfitmorgan]

The red and white calf still has scours, at this point im thinking it is the milk replacer. They have already been treating for coccidiosis and we have treated for scours for 3 days straight. No improvement as of yet in fact it is getting worse. So today we are going back to our normal brand which is suckle select. The brand I'm thinking is causing the problems is Dumor which we only got because it was on sale at tsc and $15 cheaper then suckle select. We have now spent well over the $15 we saved trying to treat scours. I find it odd that the dumor calf replacement could be that bad since for years we have used dumor nurse all for our lambs and goats without any issues.

A bit cooler today at only 72F but 76% humidity so you can cut the air. They are calling for a thunderstorm this afternoon so hopefully that cuts the humidity down.