Facilities upgrades

Well, I didn't like the plan Hubbard was able to generate, even thought it was what I asked for. So I talked to Lewis Ramsey at Milk Safety and some of his comments were exactly what I needed to come up with the above layout. Set up to ship or receive or process, or all of the above. Now to get it drawn up into a plan I can submit to Frankfort, with all the details like lighting placement, floor drain locations, etc and so forth. The devil's in the details...
It may be self serving but I really have to say the guys in Milk Safety have been so far very easy to work with. Yes, they have a job and they will get it done ie meeting all the regs but they want people to dairy, even non conventional stuff like a farmstead cheeseplant.

Got my 'custom' feed wagon from Ag Wood. That's a local farm store, agricultural supplies of all sorts including flatbed wagons. Usually used for hauling tobacco from the field in to the barn, also for hay. I had an old running gear with a gravity bin on it, had them take the bin off and put a wire panel bed on the running gear (which is the part with wheels, axles, and a pole to connect the two axles). The idea is to stack hay on the wagon and have the sheep eat through the wire panels. Works on the ground except they eat everything they can reach and then have to wait for me to shove the panels in. I am hoping the weight of the hay will cause the bales to settle down as the sheep eat.
Already see a better design, although it'll only hold half the hay: instead of a flat surface tehy can eat through, mount gates at a 90 degree angle so the sheep can eat from a slanted surface; would let me drop the hay a foot lower, make it possible for the sheep to eat far more easily.

Now to get the self feeder welded, and call the concrete guy for a bid... Rams go inthree weeks from now, I am worried as they still aren't in good enough shape despite deworming with the only dewormer the Drench Rite said might still be effective. Also moved them to better pasture. Can a ram be considered facilities? They are a tangible asset to me, just like the wagon or the feeder. I am so short on time and sleep and reward lately I am afraid I am losing my heart for this.

Two steps forward, one step back

Well, Gary Spry didn't bother to be there for our appointment, nor did he ever call me back. I was so peeved I got on the Iphone right there in the lobby and found the website for the Kentucky Society of Architects http://aiaky.org/find.php. Lo and behold, there is one not two miles form my house. In thirty minutes we were discussing a plan.
Enter Jud (I think, I never actually got his first name) Hubbard, of Hubbard Architect, PSC, Mt Sterling KY. His wife is assistant principal at the elementary school for our district. Anyway, he's never done anything like a dairy before, so the first iteration wasn't perfect. We hashed some of that out, and we'll see what he's got later this week.
Not a week after I talked to him one of my regulars calls me about her order and mentions both her daughter and son-in-law are architects! Nice to have a back-up, but hopefully the third time's the charm.
Have an interview sometime this week with Chris Jelesky, a student majoring in Sustainable Ag at UK. Check out the program's website, http://www.ca.uky.edu/SustainableAgCurriculum/index.html. I'm excited to find out about it. Kentucky needs this. I need an intern- I have gotten to the point where I cannot manage the production and marketing by myself. We'll see what I think of Chris and he of me... Little does he know, it will be a working interview, I have to go sort a neighbor's lambs for him that afternoon.
Right before he comes I plan on attending a webinar hosted by the American Grassfed Association on meat processing. Jay Wenther, Executive Director of the American Association of Meat Processors, will be talking about how to speak the processor's language. Since communicating effectively with Boone's to get what I want is a major issue for me... I really hope it'll be useful.
Speaking of Boone's, they made me some lamb sausages last time and they are FABULOUS. A little lean, really, the chorizo and zesty italian would have melded a little better with a little more fat to carry the flavor. The breakfast links were probably the best sausage I've ever had. I also had them do a bulk sausage, a sweet italian and a bratwurst. To be honest, I am not a fan of bratwurst so I haven't tried it. The sweet italian version garnered raves from my neighbor Matt Foster; he and his family live on the next farm, he has a soup to nuts media company in Louisville, if you need any media services they'll set you right up. I've seen his place, they really can do anything; and if the rest of his staff area s talented as Tonya Laffkas, the graphic designer who came up with my logo- you can't go wrong with http://www.interactivemedialab.com/.
After the sausage (and several dark Mexican beers, Modelo Negro I think) we were all sitting around listening to our new neighbors shooting targetrs and riding dirt bikes, and we got to talkign about how to make our farms as valuable for farming as they are for housesites.
Of course the sheep dairy and cheeseplant is my idea; his is a wetland hunting reserve with a bed and breakfast. There's an old house, Klondike, in between us and them that would be perfect. Right up the driveway from where I want to put the second, demo dairy- which will be a tiny parlor surrounded by a classroom so kids can come see cows be milked. Then we'll ride them down the old railbed on a horsedrawn wagon to the cheeseplant and they can see what happens to milk once it leaves the animal. So maybe Klondike can be not only a bed and breakfast surrounded by gorgeous gardens of edibles, at the center of a locale for experiencing Kentucky's flora and fauna, but also serve as an educational center where we can show people how animals and plants live and grow and are harvested to become healthful soul and stomach satisfying meals in a sustainable fashion, in balance with the natural world.
Anybody got $500,000 to get it going?
No?
Guess I'll have to generate it then- which is why I am moving toward having a booth at the Lexingotn Farmers Markets. I submitted an application, once (if) we are approved I aim to be there Wednesday and Saturday downtown, and Sunday at Southland. Can't cover the Tues-Thurs markets yet- again with the need for interns. I'll have my lamb, of course, and Joe's chicken; we've started to do pork, since we ended up doing it for Debbie Puckett over at Paris Farmer's Market; Woody's got eggs, and honey, and grassfed beef. If we can find a place to get them processed Woody does rabbits, and my little girl would like to get into them too. Joe's tobacco stick crafts would fit in somewhere I imagine.
I was checking out the Farmer's Market on Southland today, and got to talking to the father of one of my husband's high school classmates, Joe McCord. They do freshwater shrimp and tilapia, and he raises quail for sport hunters. He mentioned he processes his quail, raises 17,000 of them. If he has a place that's certified to do quail it shouldn't take much to get approved to do rabbit. I'll call him and see if he's interested in loaning it out...

Just keep after it

Well, I haven't been able to get a response form Frank Kipe in 6 weeks- hope nothing bad has happened to him but I have to get another architect if I'm going to stay on schedule.
So I called Gary Spry, of Winchester. He's the one who drew the plans for Susan Miller over at Bluegrass Chevre. Check her out at www.bleugrasschevre.com.
And we have made the mometous decision that we are paying cash. For everything. Construction, equipment, operating expenses. Which means another momentous decision: reduce the amount we are putting into formal retirement accounts. We aren't reducing the amount we are putting away- just putting it into a different investment.
The sheep are worrying me. I think I may have to deworm them- despite being in good flesh and showing no evidence of diarrhea I have had a lamb die of (lab confirmed) parasitism. That is unacceptable to me- but how do I maintain genetic progress toward building a flock that is genetically tolerant of parasites? FAMACHA seems useless in situations like these- there isn't any detectable anemia. Not sure what to do. It has been an ung=believably rainy summer, which has surely contributed. And I still don't have my fence the way I need it, also contributing.
I'll keep you posted!

More challenges

The summer continues to be challenging. Lost some more lambs, this time to coyotes. Have a donkey and two horses- very effective guardians due to their size and dislike of canines, plus the kids love them.
Was hoping to pour concrete in September, getting anything done is cheap right now since everybody needs work- but I can't get a plan from Frank Kipe, who must have bigger to fish to fry. I really want him to do it since he's the only one I know who works on dairies this scale. May just take what I have to someone local, although I don't know who. I could come up with most of it myself, and just go abck and forth with the designer until his picture looked like the one in my head. Maybe Frank'll get caught up here soon enough,.
Am trying to get about half a mile of fence up so I can do a better job of controlling grazing. Thought I had it done, but it's not energized. I suspect I need a proper ground rod for the solar fence box, so I'll try to get to that this weekend. I have all the wire run, but I reused some old wire so I might have to rerun it if it still won't carry a charge after I ground it properly and check all the connections.
The upshot of which is, the ewes are stuck in a field without enough to eat and the slaughter lambs are stuck in a field with predator pressure. Ugh.
On the bright side, I have come up with an idea for cheap portable shelters for the ram and lamb pens and for mineral feeders in all the fields. Cattle panels arced in half, fastened down with bent metal rod and covered with a tarp. Should also work for the kids' rabbits they've been bugging me to get. We have an agreemement: we'll eat all the boys and not eat the girls. I just wish I could find a way to get them processed for retail sale. Long story. Involves the government.
I still need to get the gravity wagons sold, use the money to rebuild the running gears and put panels on them so I can use them as hay feeders. Also still need to get the old truck cleaned up and sold- need to do that by the end of AUgust when I'm scheduled to go to Bruce, Wisconsin and pick up my new ram from Larry Meiesegier at River Ridge Stock Farm.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Or as Scarlett O'Hara said, I'll worry about that tomorrow.

Reengaging

It has been a nasty nine months. Full of struggle and suffering both physical and emotional and financial. Bad enough I wanted to quit. I lost most of my best ewes and all my favorites, some violently and some slowly and painfully. I thought it was over when spring came and then started losing lambs to coyotes. Then that stopped and dogs attacked again. The last injured lamb died last week and I got the last set of necropsy results- my best ewe, that the dogs ran down a bank into a pond? Yeah, she essentially starved to death - term pregnant with triplets. Because of the drought and then the rain and mud she had gotten to a point where she physically could not eat enough of the feed we had left to keep up.
But summer is finally here, the surviving sheep are in good shape again and I can honestly say I am in better shape. I lost a lot of money and production capacity- but I am at last at a point where I can admit the knowledge of what happened without crying or being sick. So I know what has to be changed, and what it will cost to make those changes.
To some extent the changes are made; the genetic makeup of the flock as a whole has been altered by the loss of those ewes. I have daughters out of most of them, which I will better serve in the future.
I'll do that by getting a portable hay feeder, hay, a new transmission and more fence. It's worth the money to lay in several months worth of high quality forage; by the time I needed it last year there wasn't any to be bought at any price, much less one I could justify. I'll need tarps to cover it, since I don't have a barn to store it in, that way if I don't need it it won't go bad. I'm hoping not to need it, not just because maybe we'll have more rain more evenly distributed this year, but also because I've already started putting in more fence so we can rotate the sheep more often. This will result in having more stockpiled grass on hand even if it does come a drought.
The lambs I do have out of my new Blackberry ram look great. Many will have to be shorn. Hopefully I'll be able to build number back up to where I can sell those out and keep only shedding ones. Shearing is hard on me, and the heat is hard on them. Still haven't shorn the adults; hoping to get the rams done (or the lambs worked, if it's wet) next Sunday. Some of the crew at the Grasshoppers CSA http://grasshopperscsa.blogspot.com/ are thinking of coming to help. Anyone who wants to is welcome!
I'll keep you posted.

Well, something did eat the baby lambs. Seven of them anyway, in three days. And ran my best ewe down a steep muddy hill into the pond. So the ewes are coming up to the barn every night, and I have gotten a donkey and put in with them. The donkey was braying the first night we put her in; when I went out to check there was an absolute howling going on back on the railroad tracks behind the house. More coyotes than I have ever heard in one place. Great.
Put the ewe to sleep uyesterday. Ater three days of nursing care, antiinflammatories, everything we could do- which was not only time consuming but physically very demanding, we're talking about a 200lb invalid here- she remained unimproved, unable to coordinate her legs well enough even to support her own weight. Why is it always your best ewe?
So I'm out of milk replacer, the transmission is out of the truck, it's been raining for two days so the mud is bad again.

So now what...

Busy weekend. Deliveries, Passover, Easter.
Finally got the ewes out on new grass. Was waiting to get them worked- didn't want to put them on the clean pasture til I had them dewormed. So they have been dewormed, the one that lost her tag is retagged, and the ones I am offering for sale have been marked. That's so I can pick them out and put them by themselves for a guy to come look at Thursday. He's thinking of getting into sheep, these should make a nice compromise between putting a lot of money at risk and buying crap at the stockyard. They are proven ewes, however they all either had singles or only claimed/raised one of twins. A 4yr old, a 2 yr old and 6 yearlings. I'll get a little more than cull ewe price and they get to go to a farm and I can keep in touch with them, so to speak. I feel responsible for them- I brought them into the world, I have to see they're cared for one way or another.
I also got the replacement ewe lambs sorted off and worked, added them back to the ewes. Hope they don't go back to nursing, some of their moms have baby lambs on them. These are full sibs to the set I jsut had such a disaster of a season with. I probably shouldn't even keep them, since odds are at least 5 of the 10 will prolapse. Prolapses are invariably fatal in my hands. Maybe a self fulfilling prophecy? But they're here, and clean, and if they don't prolapse they have some really nice fertility and maternal traits behind them. Looks like they will all shed. Plus they're nicely colored, I know that shouldn't matter!
Moved the slaughter lambs to the area the ewes were in, which let me put the bucket lambs in the field of new grass where I had been forced to let the slaughter lambs run every other day. So better for the sheep, better for the grass in both fields, and much easier on me since everyone has access to more grass, more room, more water now.
Did not get the last prolapse ewe out of the barn- died despite an epidural, Buhner (a pursestring suture to hold everything in), antiinflammatories, antibiotics, nursing care. She had prolapsed her entire rectum and colon, about 2 ft in all. I may send those replacements to slaughter after all...
Last thing I'll mention tonight, antibiotics. I treated all the breeding ewes with an injection of antibiotics when I worked them. Looking over my records I ntoiced more than a third of the ewes lambed later than they should have. When we turn the ram in he has on a harness that holds a big block of colored wax; whenever he breeds a ewe it leaves a colored mark on her rump. I wrote down who got marked every week. This gave me an idea when each ewe should lamb. Many didn't lamb to their first breeding , so I wondered if I picked up one of the breeding diseases from one of my new rams (had two last year, from different farms). Most of the diseases that cause reproduction problems in ewes are responsive to the antibiotic I used. I'll turn in blood on the rams, but may or may not be able to find it that way. I'll explain serological diagnosis in another post ;) Since many did lamb to their first breeding, and everyone lambed, I doubt it was the ram.
So now I can relax a bit, knowing the sheep are on better grass (all age groups) and the weather is supposed to be easier for a month or so. Now if only nothing eats the baby lambs, the ewes are further away from the house now...