Months away

[Tr4ever]

Hi,

New member, actually Ridgetop's younger brother. I was going to make a crack about being the better looking one in the family, kind of a Robert Redford vs. the Munsters thing, but sometimes jokes don't come through as jokes when typed. Just for future reference i have a smart mouth (some would say, the only smart part of me), so if you read somthing i typed that sounds awful, I'm probably joking.

We don't have any sheep yet (actually don't really have any pasture yet), but i really want a few hobby sheep. Currently we are building a house on 5 acres, north of Seattle. Getting close, and hoping to be in late July early August. We do have pasture there, but not at our current surburban home. Right now we have four chickens and two Great Pyrenees.

We have a ton of work yet to do on the property, fencing foremost. Sis (Ridgetop) recomended 6' 4"x4" woven. I don't see that advertized locally, but need to actually walk in and ask at a few farm supply stores. Originally i was planing on 5' no-climb with a hot wire on top.

Which brings us to my first question does anyone have experience with the motorized t-post drivers? Over the past few years, as we were cleaning up the property, we planted fruit trees and quickly found that the deer prefer anything we plant over the abundance of existing browse. We fenced off the trees and quickly learned that i don't like driving t-post manually. Obviously this is all a learning experience for us. For instance i had no idea that black berry vines also grew tires. Under every big clump of black berries we found another pile of old tires. So thoughts/recomendations on motorized T-post drvers would truly be appreciated.

I did manage to finish a "hoop coop" yesterday so the chickens have a new home to move into. Not as fancy as their current abode, but hey, i have a lot on my plate right now. I attached a pic of thier current coop. I posted the build on backyard chickens back when we built it.

Since the backberries keep coming back my thought was to get some hair sheep, as i understand the will eat blackberys, and are not as much of escape artists as goats. I'm kind of considering St Croix or Katahdin. I'm looking for an easy to take care of/manage sheep breed. I get that all animals require time and effort, but some require less than others.

Thank you, gonna be a scorcher here this weekend, they are now pedicting over 100 degrees around Seattle. Not uncommon for other parts of the country, but here that's a legitimately dangerous temperature range.

 

[Baymule]

Hey! Welcome brother of my best friend! LOL LOL I'm @Ridgetop's Texas Connection! Haha! So glad to meet you, welcome to the forum!

We are on 8 acres in east Texas. We fenced it in the 2"x4" non climb horse wire. Yeah, go with the 4"x4" sheep and goat wire. It's less expensive and comes on a bigger roll. Get the hi-tensile, it's stronger, stretches better (wish I had used hi-tensile). We fenced the parameter, then fenced in a 100'x70' garden, backyard fence, all in all, we have 5 pastures, a 36'x36' horse barn and a 12'x24' portable building with a lean to roof off the side of it that extends out 20', for a sheep barn. It only has the 1 solid side, so good air flow for our heat. we put radiant heat barrier under the metal roof, which I heartily recommend. It drops the temperature by 10 to 15 degrees.

We used a manual T-post driver. It's good exercise and burns calories, which you can immediately make up for by consuming large amounts of ice cream, before going to bed. You also need an auger, we bought one at Harbor Freight for $200, great tool for digging corner post holes. And you need a set of manual post hole diggers to deepen the hole where the auger can't go any deeper. I bought a set with curved metal handles instead of the traditional straight knuckle knocking wooden handles. Heavy, but burns calories. Note: reference the ice cream. Again, be sure to consume enough ice cream before bed so that you don't lose valuable body mass from all your exertions.

Here is a link to our fence building successes and failures. There is good discussions on what we did wrong. LOL Read the whole thing, just don't read the first page or two, then rush off blindly to do what I did. My mistakes are gleefully pointed out and corrections offered, much to my chagrin, after the fact. We did do some things right, as 7 years later, it is still standing and keeping livestock in.

Non-Climb 2"x4" Horse Wire Fence

There have been a lot of fence discussions here on BYH. As many of you know, my husband and I bought a home on 8 acres and moved 160 miles to be close to our DD, DSIL and our precious 2 grand daughters. There was nothing here but the house. Nothing. We had a house in town and acreage outside of...

www.backyardherds.com

Welcome to the forum, ask any questions, we will be glad to offer advice, copious amounts of it. Take what you want, apply it to your efforts and ignore the rest. All of us think we know what we are doing, we probably don't , but we are here for your amusement.

I have sheep, Katahdin/Dorper mixed ewes and a registered Katahdin ram, Ringo. We just bought 2 future wives to add to Ringo's harem, lovely registered 3 1/2 month old registered ewes. Really excited about them. Your sister will be a wealth of information for you, she is greatly helpful here on the BYH forum.

This is a great place to learn what to do/not to do, we post our successes and our miserable failures, complete with pictures, lots of pictures. Welcome!

 

[Alaskan]

Goats would definitely eat those fruit trees.

Sheep would be safer.

The taller fence, with hot wire on top, will keep out more predators, and keep in the Pyrenees, so will keep you happier.

Always woven wire... welded wire is crap, and not worth any money, not even worth it if you find it for free.

Here we do all things by hand... t-post driver, and hand-held posthole digger, traditional knuckle buster model.

So... no idea as to those fancy motorized things.

Blackberry jam! Blackberry pie!

 

[Ridgetop]

I was going to make a crack about being the better looking one in the family, kind of a Robert Redford vs. the Munsters thing,

 

[Ridgetop]

For instance i had no idea that black berry vines also grew tires. Under every big clump of black berries we found another pile of old tires.

We used a manual T-post driver. It's good exercise and burns calories, which you can immediately make up for by consuming large amounts of ice cream, before going to bed. You also need an auger, we bought one at Harbor Freight for $200, great tool for digging corner post holes. And you need a set of manual post hole diggers to deepen the hole where the auger can't go any deeper. I bought a set with curved metal handles instead of the traditional straight knuckle knocking wooden handles. Heavy, but burns calories. Note: reference the ice cream. Again, be sure to consume enough ice cream before bed so that you don't lose valuable body mass from all your exertions.

Gosh, we are dieting so thinking of going out to drive some T posts to merit ice cream. LOL Returning to TX soon where the best ice cream lives. What is the brand again? Last time I brought the wrong one. Will be swimming twice a day and doing water aerobics to lose Covid pounds. Will just get the good ice cream for Bay's and BJ's grand daughters when they come for a swim and visit.

Depending on when we leave TX, we may swing by Arlington and help drive T posts. Or sit with your DW and watch you work while having a cooling ice tea.

Listen to all the good advice you get on this forum. Everyone has experience from every part of the country. For you, Katahdins might be the best option. They are beginning to be recognized as a good meat breed, have better wet weather parasite resistance, come in different color patterns making them easily recognizable in the pasture, and shed completely out. They are easy keepers on pasture, lamb twins easily, and are excellent mothers. You don't want to get a breed where you have to reach inside to disentangle lambs and pull lambs out, No matter how often I have done it, it is never pleasant for me, the ewe, or my helpers.

 

[Baymule]

It’s BLUEBELL!!! How could you forget? That’s the TexasNational brand!!

Years ago Japan started marketing what they called Bluebell ice cream. Some good ol’ boys from Texas, Congressmen, had to have a talk with Japan over that! Don’t mess with Texas and durn shure don’t mess with our Bluebell Ice Cream!!

 

[Ridgetop]

I put it in my phone! I think I bought Blue Bunny. Couldn't understand what was so special about that brand. Obvious I got the wrong one The ice cream we had at your place was delicious! And here I thought it was just the company that made it so good!!!

 

[Ridgetop]

Thank you, gonna be a scorcher here this weekend, they are now pedicting over 100 degrees around Seattle. Not uncommon for other parts of the country, but here that's a legitimately dangerous temperature range.

No A/C in Seattle except in large commercial buildings! Will be bad -

DSIL1 said that when they were in the Grand Canyon last week they heard that 2 people hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon died of heatstroke. They just went part of the way down. And IT RAINED on Wednesday night - the night they arrived!!! Apparently that lowered the temperature on Thursday which is the day they hiked into the canyon. No one lost over the side either. Although I am sure the children tried as they got way close to the edge and their parents kept grabbing them back!!!

 

[farmerjan]

Welcome to BYH. I have learned alot from @Ridgetop but since you are a sibling/relation.... you won't learn a thing... we never listen to or learn from our relatives do we????

I just bought a house on 2 acres close to several farms we rent here in Va and am going to use 4x4 sheep and goat fencing... it will keep in the chickens although not little chicks... but mostly it is to keep in chickens, and keep out most of the predators like foxes.... I would go the 2x4 no climb... but there are times that being able to climb over is important... so don't want to go that route. Plus the expense....
We mostly fence at our pastures with the standard "woven wire" field fencing which has 6 in openings... graduated from bottom closer to top further apart... 6 in is the stays ( upright or vertical spacing) the horizontal wires will go from 3" to 8" apart from bottom to top. But chickens will get through the 6" easier so a border fence around smaller properties is better.

Been in the low 90's here a couple times and getting ready to get HOT the next couple of days.

Have no experience with motorized post drivers... we either do wooden posts driven with a post driver attached to the tractor hydraulics... or hand drive them. Are you using the t-post drive that is like a round cylinder and you drop it over the top then raise and pound it in that way? A sledge on a t-post is the real old fashioned miss and someone gets their hands busted way.... The other post driver is not so bad...
Other option is get someone to just come and drive all your posts... many of the fence builders will drive posts for a fee and it sometimes is faster to get that done and then you run the wire... and sometimes getting the whole job done is faster and smarter than buying the equipment and doing it piece meal... and there is no shame in getting it done and then going from there....sometimes money well spent to have it done and over....

 

[Tr4ever]

Thank you very much for the coments and advice Truly apprciated! Ridgetop is as sharp as a tack and has learned a bit about dogs, goats, sheep, rentals, and children over the years (and I'm saying those things even though she's my sis).

I welded together a tpost driver out of some old pipe and scraps i found on the property. I used it to drive the posts around the garden/orchard to fence out the deer and rabbits. It's heavier than the cheap ones in the stores, but still takes a lot of work to drive the tposts, and nobody told me about the icecream. It's not that I'm afraid of hard work. I mean afraid is such a strong word, couldn't we use something along the lines of timid or diffident?

I have to look around a bit to see who has treated round posts or cedar logs longer than 8' for the corners, and the 4" woven. The first fence will be close in to the house. I like the idea of looking through 4" woven much better than no climb.

We survived the heat spell (broke records from Oregon up to British Columbia). My wife froze bowls of water for the dogs, they suffered in the heat but seemed to really enjoy the ice. The shade loving plants out front got sunburned but survived

The house build is moving along slowly, and they just finished the pad for the shop (and found another tire). Things are taking longer than we hoped, getting a little worried we will miss the summer house selling window, but things will work out the way they are meant to.

Really looking forward to getting settled in and starting some "fun" projects. The boss is looking forward to her new house (she says her fun projects involve opening the back door and sternly saying "dogs, husband outside") I didn't have the guts to ask if that was in the morning or night.