Roller coaster week

Last Wednesday the day started out nice.  It was supposed to get cold and snow a bunch.  We moved pairs of ewes and lambs around to get them out of the barn.  If it did snow a lot it would be a few days before we could move them.  The barn pens would get full and backed up so we made room.

It did snow about four inches and got cold.  It was minus -3 the next morning.  That is about as cold as it had gotten all winter and its April.

I fed the cows that morning.  The grass is starting to green up and the cows can smell the new grass and they want to quit eating hay, but this morning hay was good
I have since moved them to a different pasture and they are content to be grazers..

Then we had to change the barn around and prepare it to move sheep through it so we could shear.  They will need to be able to get into the barn once they are fresh sheared.  It takes a couple of weeks for them to get toughened in without their wool.  Plus we are still lambing the yearling ewes, so have to keep them separate.

Shearing day arrived and we just had family help to push sheep.  The crew consisted of five shearers and two wool helpers.  The day was warm and calm.  Like 70 degrees.

Part of the crew push sheep to the crowding pen. Then we push them single file down the alley and up the ramp into the trailer.

This is part of my crew to push the ewes up the alley.  It really goes pretty good, once in a while we get a stubborn one.  We ate lunch in the barn.  Everyone could distance as much as the needed.  Once the food shows up so does the guard dog.

It looked like rain so we loaded the wool on the trailer and headed to Belle Fouche and the wool warehouse.  Due to the tariff war and the virus the wool market is non-existent. Our wool is high quality and typically goes to the military for uniforms and also the high end wool socks.

Wool stacked in the wool warehouse in Belle Fouche.
Now today Easter Sunday another snow storm came through and left about an inch of new snow

Late March and a nice day.

Had a beautiful day to lamb some ewes.  It got to 70 degrees, a little windy at times. In two days they think we will have six inches of snow.  We can use the moisture as it has been quite dry, but don't like that much snow.  The ground is warm enough it won't last long.

Got some pairs out of the barn so they can enjoy the sunshine.

The lambs enjoy the sunshine and it is good to get used to being outside.  We are lambing the yearling ewes.  These are first time mothers so it is good to take some extra time with them.  Most of them have single lambs, very few twins.  We don't expect them to raise two lambs.

Here are some lambs that are resting under the feed trough while their mother munch hay.  They are learning safety in numbers and having a trough for protection.

Granddaughter Lily is three going on four and she helps Grandma a lot in the sheep barn.  We went down to feed the chickens some of Grandma's worms.  Also gather some eggs. Eggs are not a problem for us.  The only problem is keeping up eating them.

I maybe should try to explain the worms.  Tammy has a large supply of worms that eat food waste and make compost for the garden and new plants.  She has two maybe three big totes of worms that she keeps feeding.  So if anyone needs worms I might be able to make a deal.

This is our chicken's winter quarters. In a few weeks as it warms up and greens up the chickens go into a portable cage that we pull around with the four wheeler.  This way they get fresh grass and bugs daily.  Later in the year I may show the chickens moving and how they enjoy being moved.

I have almost quit blogging but, out of boredom maybe I will start again.  We are sort of busy lambing the yearling ewes right now.  Mostly singles and they are lambing slow, five or six lamb a day.  When the bunch of old ewes lamb in a month we could get 40 new mothers a day with mostly twin births.  Marshall sheared most of these that are lambing a couple of weeks ago.  He got a guy to help him that came out of retirement.  Marshall got over a hundred and the guy got 49.

This is a file photo.  I have a new phone and it doesn't bring all the pictures to the computer.  My old phone just did  it.  I don't know how to make this one work that way.

We were going to get a professor from North Dakota State at Hettinger to come down with their wool analysing machine to come down and do our whole herd.  He would take a sample of wool from each sheep and put it in the machine and it would spit out about six different numbers of the wool sample.  A micron number, a comfort factor, staple length, curvature factor and some other I don't know what they mean.  They NDSU has a travel ban on now.  Plus if he leaves Hettinger he is an EMT and would have to be quarentined for two weeks when he got back.  Also in most rural areas there is a shortage of EMTs.

We went to town for groceries on March 9.  Tammy bought like almost $300 of groceries.  They had everything we needed.  Flour, bread, toilet paper and all.  Then all hell seams to have broke loose.  We have stayed home and listened to the TV and social media.  She thought we should go for another run two weeks later March 22.  So we went early in the day, which for us is like 11 AM.  We have to do chores and get ready.  No potatoes, macaroni and noodles were picked over, tp gone,  no flour, meat case seemed to be pretty full.  lots of milk and eggs.  Only peanut butter was extra chunkie.  Some shelves were empty and I didn't know what they are out of.  Another $300 dollar trip.  Might be a while for we go back.

Two weeks from today we will shear the rest of the sheep and then start lambing them a couple of weeks after that. Wool has been a good price the last several years.  This year we were told earlier the starting price would be 25% less than a year ago.  The wool market is tied to the Austrailian wool clip.  So the Austrailian dollar set the price and It has fell this last week about 15% compaired to our dollar.

The cattle markets are so upset nobody is really selling or buying till things settle down.  Several auction barns in South Dakota canceled their sales.

I guess I will leave with a picture from last summer.  Sheep in the sweet clover.