Christmas storm

We have been hearing on the weather reports of this impending storm on Christmas day.  Yesterday was pretty nice.  Calm and clear and about 19 degrees.  By afternoon we had the east wind.  Which for us means moisture coming in.

This morning it was calm and about 20 degrees, but raining.  The cattle were getting wet.

When we fed the cattle cake things were getting icy.  It was more a misty fog early on.  But then about 9AM it started to rain.

Looking out the pickup window it was pretty wet.  Shortly after this picture was taken it started to snow.  It snowed hard then slacked off.   The wind is predicted to blow 70 MPH this afternoon.  Now about 2:30 the wind is starting to pick up.    Ryan has lost his electricity already and our electricity went off , but came right back on.  The way the weather report is the crews probably won't go out till late Monday or Tuesday.

The sheep are locked in the corral so if it gets really bad we could put them in the shed.  The cows can go to the creek bottom to stay out of the wind.  Luckily the creek is dry so the bottom is dry.

The temperature is not to get so cold so the wind chills are only to go to -15 to -20 below.

Winter 2016

It was -20 degrees this morning.  We had the sheep in the corral in case it really stormed, so they wouldn't drift off.  Did end up with maybe four inches of snow that blew some.  The weather man in Rapid City thought this was the first time since 2011 that we had been this cold.  We had had such nice weather through November that we should have got more done.

Here I had been feeding hay to the sheep for the past three weeks.  About the time we turned the bucks out to lamb in April.  They have been getting .7 lbs. of whole corn fed on the ground for the last month.

 The grouse enjoy cleaning up the kernels of corn that the sheep don't get.  We have 15 or twenty head of grouse.

We were having trouble watering the cows.  It was taking longer than it should.  Then over Thanksgiving three water leaks finally showed up.  So we got them all fixed.  The cows enjoyed watching the process on the one leak.

We started feeding the cows hay just before the cold weather moved in.  They were not too enthused to start with about eating hay.  They still had a lot of grazing.  Now with the cold weather and the added snow cover they like to come for hay.

The first time I fed only about three head came to eat.  

The heifer calves have been sent to the feed lot for the winter.  We had weaned them for about a month to get them started.  With the cold weather most activities have been curtailed except the usual chores everyday .