The weather has changed for the better for us.  Last Friday the 17th in the evening we got a rain and hail storm.  When it was all over we had 0.32" in the rain gauge.  It stayed rainy all weekend and  we accumulated another 1.37", so had a total of about 1.70"  The welcome moisture has really greened the pastures up.  The hay crop is looking up, we may get some hay now so the spirits of every one has risen.

We kept trying to set a time and date to dock lambs, but it stays cool and moist.  So we turned out the older 200 ewes and lambs.

This is our first small pasture that has been grazed close during the winter.  Anything that grows shows green.  The little clumps in the foreground are cactus plants, so in reality the grass is quite short.

Then on May 23 we got to go to town.  The last time we were in town was April 25.  We have been busy in the lambing barn, so hadn't been anywhere to get groceries or anything. The refrigerator was getting pretty bare.  The cupboard was beginning to look like Old Mother Hubbard's.  So at the price of groceries we purchased over $200 worth of groceries.

Tammy and I went over to help Ryan sort cows the other day.  He needed to sort off some cows that he will artificial breed.  Then he sorted off his yearling heifers and brought them over here.  We sorted off three bulls and brought them over here to turn out with the heifers.

Then today we had some rain early this morning.  We got 0.14", but north 6 miles they got 2.50", with water going over the road.  Then this afternoon we got a hard shower that measured 0.70".  But further north they got more rain.  It run water around here.

Here just north of the house is an old dam running into a fairly new dugout.  The dugout was almost empty and the dam was dry through the winter, but had been getting a little water with every snow and rain event this spring.

This is a patch of cactus on what is a hardpan spot.  Now the cactus sets in water.  The splotches on the left are cow tracks through the mud.  These bare patches over a large area are what makes runoff of water to fill the dams and dugouts.  Where there is a cover of grass it slows the water and gives the water a chance to soak in the ground and cuts down on runoff.

I am glad I got my sorghum planted before this rain.  The field was full of hardpan spots and would have taken forever to dry out.

Busy lambing

Our first lambs started coming Monday April 29.  The start date was May 1.  By then we had 6 ewes lambed.  They started out slow with 15 to 20 ewes lambing a day.  Then they increased to around 30 or more a day.  They kept up this pace for it seemed two weeks.  It has really kept us hopping.  The neighbor girl, Hope and daughter-in-law Shilo alternated days to help us during the week.  Grand-daughter Brooke started helping drag lambs to the barn.

The weather stayed warm.  One day it was 93 degrees.  We hadn't had any moisture, so things were looking bleak.  Our neighbor sold a fourth of his herd as pairs in Philip on May 14.  They had a big sale.  They started selling slaughter cows at 8:00AM and switched to pairs about noon.  I watched the sale on the computer during lunch time.  They were still selling pairs at 4:00 PM at break time. Then at 8:30 PM when we came in for supper they just finished grass cattle and started back on weigh-up cows.  The grass cattle should have gone to grass , but there is none so had to be sold.

Our heifers have been in a feedlot since last December.  As they get bigger now they are costing over $2.00 per day per head.  So we brought them home to eat what grass we have.  There is a little new grass and some old grass for them to eat.  The truck driver is from Vale and he thought we looked greener than they.
Still not much to look forward to if you are a heifer or anything else depending grass for a meal.

Here  the heifers are unloaded and getting accustomed to their new environment.

Then we squeezed our branding in there somewhere.  We branded ours in the morning and Ryan's in the afternoon.

Here are our calves that have been branded and are waiting to be turned back with the cows. Tammy went back over to the lambing barn to pen new mothers between branding the two bunches. It takes a while to eat dinner and get Ryan's cows in and calves sorted off, so she had time.

Then it was back to the lambing barn, where we spent the next two weeks.

Here is a new mother with her newborn lamb that is just minutes old.

Tammy had four classes from different schools in Rapid City that wanted to have a field trip to a farm.  She arranged to have one group go to the Cammack ranch at Union Center and one group go to the Snyder ranch near Sturgis and we took two groups on different days.  There was about 75 in a group.  One was a group of third graders and one was a group of fourth graders.

They arrived in two buses and are very excited. Tammy explains to a group about the jockey pens and what happens in that area.

Here I am with one of my groups intently waiting on a ewe to give birth to a lamb.  We waited and waited and she just wasn't ready to have her lamb so we had to move on.  Much to the disappointment of  our group.

As I close out this blog we have been getting rain for the last five days.  We have gotten about 1.80" of rain. So now for the first time this year we have a new problem - mud. But we are about done lambing and are ready to do something else.  There are about twenty ewes left to lamb.

Got the sheep sheared two weeks ago.  They stayed white for about as long as they ever have, because of the moisture and the lack of blowing dust.  One year the sheep were black in about two days due to blowing dust.  Marshall came out and helped for a few days.  Put some skylights in the barn roof that had blown out.

Then we cleaned the inside of the barn.  Since the roof inside is low we use a blade on the back of the little tractor.  It takes awhile but we get it done.

It is on old pole barn so there are lots of poles to work around.  Some hand work in the end. It helps to have a little weight on the blade.  The roof is low so if you would lamb in the winter or in colder weather there would be less space to heat with the bodies of the sheep.  Most lambing barns had a  low roof.  The new trend in lambing barns is insulated and heated with a heater.

Once the shed is cleaned out it looks good.  We let the ground dry for a while.

Then it is time to get the tractor and bale processor and a couple of bales of straw and blow some straw into the barn.

Then we let the dust settle and hope it blew a long way in.  Our straw bales were three years old so they were really dry and blew really well.  Since we don't as a rule raise any straw we get straw when we can and as much as we can.

 

A straw bale blown in to the shed.  Actually one bale blown in each door.  Then when the dust settles some we take our pitch forks and spread out the straw to bed the barn.

A fresh bedded barn ready for sheep.  They will love there newly bedded barn.

Ryan is about done calving at the ridge. My cows here just started a week ago.  Counting the cows that we purchased out of Wyoming that have been calving we are over half done here.  Brandings have started.  Ryan went to one Saturday and one Sunday.  Tammy and I went to one today.  Ryan is going to get ready to brand at his place this week if all goes well.  We should get our first lamb any day now and it looks like the ewes will really lamb fast and furious.  Hopefully our help will last.

Since I am about out of cow hay I will have turn my cows and calves out and finish calving in the big pasture.  I will put them in the south pasture.  the only pasture with much water in it.  Not much green grass yet.  We are thankful for the moisture but have measured less than an inch in the month of April.  I took a sample of the water to measure quality in the south pasture.  It measured 3490 TDS (total dissolvable solids) Pretty high for this time of year.  Remember 5000 is the dangerous level.  I will be busy lambing so won't have much time to monitor a tank.

I was out driving around this evening and noticed our salt seeps.  It looked particularly big and really white.

It has been a busy week.  The snow storm of last week left us with 8 inches of snow and about 0.51" of moisture in the snow.  The grass is trying to start growing as the ground was warm from the week before.

Our cows continue to calve right along.  They did stop having calves during the worst of the snow storm, but when it was over they started calving again.  We did not loose any calves to the snow and cold.  It did get down to single numbers above zero for a couple of mornings.  Shouldn't be that cold in mid-April.

Even after the storm was over it kept wanting to snow about every day, but never accumulated any snow.  The calves were snuggled in the extra hay that was fed to keep calves dry.

Then we got a call from the shearers that they wanted to shear the sheep on Sunday.  Earlier the date they had given us was Tuesday.  So Tammy had to make a trip to town to get groceries for the shearing crew.  I had to get the barn ready for the shearing.  I make lots of curves and corners for the sheep alley to get to the shearing trailer.  With every curve and corner the alley gets narrower and narrower till it is narrowed to single file.  We put the sheep in the barn on Saturday afternoon.  It was supposed to rain or snow Sunday so we were prepared to shear Sunday.  Then Sunday the phone rang at 5:30 AM and we were told the shearing trailer was up by Buffalo, SD and the road was too icy to drive on.  The wind was supposed to come up and blow 50 MPH.  So shearing was called of till Monday.  We didn't get any moisture here.  Mobridge was reported to have gotten a foot of snow.  We let the sheep out to eat and then it started snowing about noon so we put them back in the barn.

Here the alley has narrowed down to three sheep wide.  Some of our valuable help riding the ewes down the alley.  At times our little helpers were all around so that it was hard not to step on one.  Too bad it had to be so cold and windy.

The ewes going up the ramp into the shearing trailer.  The whole side of the trailer folds out and becomes a roof for the two wool sorters.  They are two young ladies that keep the wool sorted.  They check for weakness in the wool fibers and sort out big chunks of dirt or coarse fibers.  The face wool is sorted off.  Then the good wool is put into the wool press and pressed into nylon wool bags that hold about 450 to 500 pounds of wool.

There were five shearers that each got at least 100 head that day.  A couple got over 120 head.  This would be a good easy day for these shearers. They arrived about 8 AM and got set up and started shearing around 9 AM then stopped for lunch and were done around 4 PM. And had packed up and left by 5 PM.

Here are a bunch of happy sheep that don't have to carry around their heavy coat of wool anymore.  They are clean and shiny.  They will stay pretty close to the barn for the next few days.  They are will get cold and chilled very easily so we need to keep an eye on them.

Today we took the wool to Belle Fouche to the wool warehouse.  It snowed and rained most of the way.
Here is Tammy standing next to a bale of her wool.  Most of our wool is the kind of wool that goes into military dress uniforms.

Here is some of the wool that is stored in this warehouse. A lot of the wool in this warehouse is of the quality for the military uniform.  If I remember correctly it is like the wool from this area makes up 40 % of  the wool made into military uniforms.

When we got home the snow was starting to accumulate.  We drove out through the cows to check for calves.

Here is a newborn that already sucked and was still pretty wobbly.  There was another one whose mother had chosen a better spot to have her new baby.

He was born in bottom of a draw in some tall grass.  I'm sure several more will be born tonight. At least it is warmer than last week.  With this snow - rain mix today we finally got over an inch of moisture totaled in 2013.  We are supposed to get more snow tonight.  Maybe as much as six inches.

Big April Snow - HA

The big long awaited snowstorm has finally arrived.  So far it hasn't amounted to much.  About four inches of snow this morning. Wind blew quite hard and it was 12 degrees, so the wind chill was cold.  Below 0.  Kind of snowed off and on all day, but no more accumulation.  There is supposed to be a second wave of moisture coming.  The radar shows it over the top of us, but it is not snowing..

I got the cows and the sheep fed this morning in the near blizzard condition.  By afternoon it had let up and we went out and checked things.  We are getting a calf every other day here.  Mostly from the cows we bought from Wyoming, but there is only 24 of them.  Our cows don't start for another two weeks.  Ryan said one cow calved last night and one today, so his calving was  slow also.  A good time to be slow.

I took a video of the sheep in the corral.  I locked them close in case the snow got warmer and wet.  Wet snow soaks into their wool worse and weights them down so they can't get up.  And being heavy with lamb and the added weight of the water that soaks into the wool they have a hard time so we just put them in the barn.  But then the barn gets wet and is hard to dry out later.  So if we can leave them out we do.

They are cleaning up the last of their hay and will bed down for the night in and hour or so.

We were scheduled to protest our tax valuations for the coming year today at 2:30.  It was storming early and was supposed to start again in late afternoon.  Tammy called the director of Equalization office and a new date to appear before the Board on April 17.  That will probably be about the day we will be shearing.

We got the soil test results back yesterday .  Since I have never done a soil test I don't know how our soils compare to good crop growing soil.  Our PH is evidently high at 7.6 to a field of 8.1.  Sodium is very high, Chlorine is very high, Iron is very high.  So we have to find a variety of something that tolerates a lot of salt.

I have been working for the last several weeks changing rear tractor tires.  One tractor had quit and had a good set of tires.  The tractor I was using had bad tires that were flat.  So we took off the good tires and took off the bad tires and put the good tires on the rims that fit the tractor that was running. The job took lots of different days but we got it done and probably saved $500 to $600.  So I paid  for my time and effort.

Been getting the barn clean and panels set up for shearing next week.  Hope this weather doesn't set the shearers too far back.  I'm sure they will loose a couple of days.  Hay piles continue to get smaller.  Hopefully with this snow and added moisture the grass will start to get some height and be good enough to graze.  Maybe we can turn the cows out to pasture in late April.  We will probably end up with about 400 bales carry-over.  Not much of a start for next year, but it is a start.

starting to farm

Well it warmed up this week.  The agronomist from the local coop came out to do soil samples.  She said this was the hardest soil she had ever tried to drive a probe into.

  After probing three different fields we hope she can come up with some recommendation  of a crop that will grow there.  We did get some snow moisture last week and it rained a few showers on Saturday the 30th March.  All totaled for the month we got 0.23'.  Not too good for one of our wettest months.

So I started trying to chisel this hard ground.  If we do get good moisture at least it will penetrate the soil and go down where plants can use it.

I did get done with this 40 acre field on Friday evening.  We are ready for the predicted moisture that is coming on Saturday.  Saturday we went over to help Ryan tag some calves and move some pairs around.
Tammy hid some eggs for the grandkids to hunt.

Here is one of the calves from a first calf heifer.  She is probably a month old and every day lays on top of this mound in middle of their lot. The first calf heifers are about done as there is only about three left.  The mature cows having just started calving a week ago are moving along and are approaching a third done.

Must be a sign of spring.  We woke up Easter Sunday morning and found a herd of turkeys in our front yard.                
Tammy took this picture out the front picture window.  I have started to water our lawn trying to save the trees and the lawn grass.  I  am watering all the cows and all the sheep with the same pump so the only time to water the lawn is in the evening until we go to bed.

It seems that the last few blog posts I have written all have the underlying theme.  Lack of moisture of any kind so far and the impending doom of the prospect of a repeat of last years moisture levels. The extreme cold temperatures of the last week with the strong winds from the southeast haven't brought any more moisture.  Normally a southeast wind for several days brings up Gulf moisture as it collides with the cold air from the north, but nothing.

Tammy talked to a guy with a feedlot in eastern South Dakota and his concern was the ranchers in the west would have to sell out their herds and they would have no calves to feed next fall.  They are running numbers as to how much it would cost to put cows in the feedlot to hold a herd together.  The costs are coming out in the $2.25 a day range.  Our cows are currently grazing old dried up grass and are getting 16 lbs. of old hay per day. The cost to replace this hay would be $.10 per lb.  So our cost with some grazing is $1.60 per day. That annuallizes out to $580 a year just for feed.  These cows won't calf for another 30 days.  We will have to kick up quality and quantity soon.  Our replacement heifers are in a feedlot by Vale and are costing $1.75 a day

Our young neighbor started selling his herd down last week.  He sold heifer calves.  He kept a quarter of his potential herd replacements and sold off three quarters.  The problem is do you sell out now and get ahead of the rush to sell later.  Or maybe you sell and it starts raining in a month and we have an average year.  Nobody knows.

I have been running grazing plans and different senarios of what to keep and what I could sell.  Nothing works out very well with no rain.  If it rains things look good and all grazing plans change.  Tammy was out in an alfalfa field the other day and we made this video.

Once the weather warms up a the end of the week I will probably start getting ground ready to plant.  Haven't decided what to plant.  That will depend on seed price and availability.  For now I guess I will close and go help Ryan tag some calves.