mysunwolf - four acres and some sheep

[CntryBoy777]

A contributing factor of getting so close, so quickly is due to the bottle lambs ya been tending to....ya sure did everything ya could've to help the little one out, but sometimes it just isn't enough for one reason or another....it is unfortunate, but ya have to feel good that ya gave to it all ya had to give....ya can always 2nd guess yourself til the cows come home, but there isn't any reason to hang your head at all....you'll get thru this and you've gained even more experience from it....

 

[mysunwolf]

Did not realize it had been over a month! Well, here's the general scoop and goings-on...

I know our lambing season ended tragically, but really I was very pleased overall. Ginger, the last girl we thought might be pregnant (she tested positive on the blood test) is definitely NOT pregnant. The theory is she aborted shortly after the blood test, or a false positive. Wish I could have found a fetus if that's what happened, since I would have liked to have it tested.

The lambs are growing up, I have two ram lambs listed for sale but we are keeping all the ewe lambs. The sheep finally got shorn last week and they have been much cooler ever since, it's been unseasonably hot and incredibly humid.

Freshly shorn girls (from L to R James, Squid, Charcoal--in the back, and Mocha):

Dora with Spot, her gorgeous black and white lamb:

View of the field:

Our 150ish meat birds are free ranging in the field. We did lose one to a predator, and never figured out what but best guess is a possum. Puff felt really bad for days after the loss, and we haven't lost a bird since (I'd first suspected him but it became clear pretty quickly that it was something else). The birds are eating us out of house and home, almost literally as many bills have been put off to buy feed for these guys. If I can sell some it will help offset, but we won't see that money for months.

I finally got some spring pigs! They are just Durocs, not my favorite breed, but they sure are pretty and should grow okay.

Cows are doing good, since getting shorn the sheep match them.

Garden is doing really well this year, I sold my gas tiller and bought a little electric cultivator. Much easier for me to use, doesn't throw me all over the place or have trouble starting. Doesn't bust sod, though. We have all the usual stuff planted: corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, greens, peas, lettuce, herbs. It's really nice to have a full garden after so many years of not having the energy!

We are working nonstop in the pottery studio as well since this is the show season.

I helped a friend butcher a lamb that they purchased from a nearby farm today, and it was fun to be able to show them the whole process and get a refresher myself.

 

[mysunwolf]

Oh, and I took some udder shots! The girls are really coming into their milk this year but I have too many others things going to milk them. It's a bummer since the udders look so nice! Might do some belated milking next month.

Charcoal is the best milker, besides her mom, and has the best udder:

Mocha's udder isn't as large, she hates to stand for milking, and she really doesn't produce much, but she grows some nice lambs.

Peaches' udder is lopsided but only because her huge lamb is favoring the one side. She is now 15 months old and has this udder, I can't wait to see what she looks like next year. My bet is she will milk nicely too. She is also Ginger's daughter, like Charcoal, and stands well for practice milking, but she is higher percentage dairy.

 

[CntryBoy777]

Sure glad things picked up for ya...and it sounds like ya have been busy.....and it appears that ya have been extremely Busy....the girls seem to be enjoying their new "wardrobe" and that was a great pic with the cows and sheep....
I can understand being busy with pottery....it is Beautiful work y'all do.....

 

[Baymule]

150 meat chickens? I thought I was overworked with 50ish, wound up butchering 44. Is that your year's supply of chicken? What breed? I raised Cornish Cross, first time, was pleased with lots of meat. I love the comparison of the sheep to the cows, haha! Piggies! I see 4, do you put one in the freezer and sell the others? Your green pastures are beautiful!

 

[mystang89]

Wow those are some beautiful udders! Great looking herd. They all look very well taken care of.

 

[mysunwolf]

We've been so busy that I haven't had a day off, or two hours off, in weeks! But I think I'll relax tonight by doing laundry

150 meat chickens? I thought I was overworked with 50ish, wound up butchering 44. Is that your year's supply of chicken? What breed? I raised Cornish Cross, first time, was pleased with lots of meat. I love the comparison of the sheep to the cows, haha! Piggies! I see 4, do you put one in the freezer and sell the others? Your green pastures are beautiful!

Well we meant to only raise 100 but I got offered 50 free ones, and who can say no to free chicks? Hahahahaha. So I built another Salatin-style pen and have them all out on the field. The two of us eat about 50 a year, plus mother in law is another 12 or so. The rest are for sale, if folks will buy them. We don't have much of a market around here. They're official Freedom Rangers, grow better than standard colored broilers and are much tastier. I like the meat off of them better than the Cornish because it's more flavorful and actually retains texture in soup. They are much less feed efficient than a Cornish, but still better than a heritage-type breed. And in general we have fewer losses in the birds. This year we've had more problems than we usually do, but so far still under our 7% losses goal. We'll see, we have one more month left (these take 10-12 weeks instead of 6-8).

We actually don't get to eat much pork as we end up selling it! We have to pay up front to get all the hogs USDA butchered, and then slowly make it back in packaged frozen meat sales over the course of the next year. People will buy breakfast sausage at $6/lb pretty much all day. We eat the packs that lose the seal and that kind of thing. No more pork chops or bacon for us, unless folks decide not to buy it.

As usual, I wish the grass would stop growing. We had 11in of rain in May alone, and in between that it was HOT and humid. So the grass would be over my head if we hadn't had the cows this year. I'm creating smaller and smaller strips out of the field as paddocks so that I can get the "trample action" when the sheep and cows graze it. We move fields every 1-2 days, and the sheep rotate in first, then the cows. The rain, manure, and strip grazing keep the fields insanely lush.

 

[Baymule]

We sold 10 of our 44 chickens, cut, vacuum sealed and that paid for over half of the expense, even counting $40 worth of ice when we butchered.

right now we are raising 2 Hereford hogs, one for the same customer that bought the chickens and half of the other goes to his sister. Since the processor we use doesn't do bacon or ham, I brine the bacon, DH smokes it and I cut and wrap it for our customers. I get $4 a pound for the pork.

We have worked hard to get pasture started here, reclaiming it from brush, weeds and green briars. The soil is sand. I hope to have pasture that looks like yours does!

 

[mysunwolf]

So I took a blurry video of my chickens running at me...

 

[mystang89]

LOL, I dont know if you've seen Ice Age 2 but that reminds me of when Sid the Sloth found all the other Sloths and they all mimicked him for some reason.