Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

[Ridgetop]

All our Weimies lived to be 14. They were inside dogs as well as outside dogs. One lived to 16. Rika just died in November aged 12 years and 6 months almost to the day. She outlived the rest of her litter. 12 years is a good age for an Anatolian. LGDs often live shorter lives due to interactions with predators, weather, etc. Bubba passed at barely 7. We think he ate a poisonous frog. Fine in the morning dead by afternoon. He was at Erick's awaiting semen collection. Horrible shock and grief for all of us.

You need to get Mel and Maisy a pup to train.

 

[SageHill]

I’m pretty much “stuck” on my breed. All of them came from Belgium. USDA changed import rules (no pups under 6 mos allowed). Obi will be 10 next month and while I truly avoid thinking about it (don’t we all), his heavy working days are numbered. This is why I bred the litter and kept one - Obi is older and I can’t import.

 

[Mike CHS]

This weather is an absolute yoyo. We had a high of 33 today and it is supposed to be a high of 40 tomorrow and down to 20 in the morning. The sheep don't seem to care but I have the stall open and the heat lamps going and they are all in.

 

[Mini Horses]

We're getting 2 days 50s, 2 days 30s.... Up & down all week. Heavy rains & 58. Wed 30 & snow coming??? Really?!?!? Unreal.

 

[Baymule]

Given a choice, sheep will take shelter out of the worst of the weather. Since I expanded the night pen in the front field to a large lot, the sheep have two shelters and a large area. They finally started using that big Pallet Palace I built. Slow rain doesn’t bother them but a hard rain sends them running for home.

Your sheep get shelter plus heat lamps. A regular sheep spa!

 

[Ridgetop]

So happy to hear that someone else runs heat lamps for their lambs. I was beginning to feel that I was a CA softie! We have heat lamps in theside barn for the creeps and the little guys have started crowding in their. Whether it is for the heat lamps or the additional hay and grain in their feeders I am not sure, but I don't intend to have a repeat of last year's disastrous season with these lambs. Some of them are tremendously thick and they all look good. DS1 even hung another heat lamb over the newbon's jug soit shara with the bottle twins adjacent.

 

[Mike CHS]

It's pretty obvious that we quit doing fall breeding because of the weather but the Katahdin ewes keep showing that they don't care. We have two yearling ewes that Oshi did not breed but Jack did. We went down to the stall yesterday morning and there was a ewe that had twin ewe lambs. She was in the stall with the heat lamps so she had that instinct working and both lambs seem to be healthy. It was down to seven degrees yesterday morning.

 

[Baymule]

Y’all are making me feel bad. A ewe had twins yesterday and it was 21F. She dropped them by the round bale, then went in the hoop shelter. She kinda left the ram lamb at the hay bale. He was yelling for momma when I went out. His mouth was warm, so he had fed. I scooped him up and took him to his momma. No heat lamps for mine. I planned on September—October lambs. I got November— February lambs with 2 more ewes to go. They don’t listen to me.

@Ridgetop has it going on with her lamb set up. The barn has a lean to wing on one side and she has the end all fixed up for lambs. Feed, hay and heat lamps.

 

[Mike CHS]

Our TDS tech just finished installing our new internet service. When I retired, it took me forever to get used to how slow our internet was since my work system was about as fast as was available. Today we went from just a step above dial-up back to lightening fast.

 

[Baymule]

That’s really awesome. It must feel like a new world.