Good Morning!

[RebelSS]

 

Shouldn't you be pulling yer pout or something??!

[Coffee118]

Good morning all. I have water this morning at the shop so the coffee is a brewin & listening to chefy baby on the radio. It's going to be in the 50's today & 60's tomorrow so I think it's time to clean the golf clubs & head to the range, most courses should open in about a month. Will strip & restring one of the poles & do some pre spawn walleye fishing down at the river. Y'all have a good day & weekend

[SwivelDigger]

Morning fellas. Made the trip to the big city yesterday for all the stuff for the party. Watching and interacting with a bunch of the people in the stores we were in makes me glad I live where I live. I'm only in my early 40's but as I get older I realize how much I don't like a lot of people. The town where I live you know most of the people, wave, maybe even smile. Possibly let them go in front of you at the checkout. Down " there" you hose someone out of a parking spot, ram in to them in the store aisles , cut in front at the checkout. Aghhhhhh!  

  Anyway, I hope you all have a good Friday and a good weekend. Think I got a little spare time this morning so I'll sneak out and try to catch a few fish. They've been biting pretty slow around here but a few of the old secret spots might produce. 

[leechlake]

The big city got to me last night.  If I leave my house and go west it turns into farmland in about 1/4 miles, I go east and it's suburban area.  I prefer to go west.  Last night we headed to East St Paul for a hockey game.  No accidents and a traffic jamb before the Lowry Tunnel, makes perfect sense huh?  I vectored us within a few miles and asked my co-pilot for directions.  She didn't bring her reading glasses.  I will stop there, boys won and we got home about 1045, I'm tired again.  

Little lady sprung good news on me this morning and she isn't pregnant.  Good to start the day with some good news.  I busted myself yesterday ranting early in the morning but get one gold star for catching myself after and apologizing.  Nothing worse than someone walking in a room with both barrels blasting and you have no context why they are acting that way, this time it was me.

I realized yesterday was day 99 so I found a Gretzky jersey and wore it for a while.  It was nice to be Gretzky for a day and I'm talking Wayne.  Warm days like today make me want to invent some sort of apparatus where you could make dog "waste" disappear or be incinerated.  I'm guessing walking around the with salamander torch won't work and could create some fumes that could hurt the ozone layer.  Speaking of that what ever happened to the shrinking ozone layer way back when?  Was that the global warming of that time?  

President isn't going to the Scalia funeral.  Guess that's a first, not going to a sitting justices funeral.  I think in the bible it says "those that are first will be last" in heaven.  Not my problem

 

[smurfy]

morning...............its Friday....................boars probably hung over. and still hasnt caught I fish!!!! LL, congrats on the 99 days!!!!!

also LL, advice from a union guy......if you clean up that doo-doo weekly its not so bad it the spring!!!!! now that its light out when I get home from work I go out twice a week to do the doo-doo duty!!!!!!!

butcher shop called yesterday, our venny products are done, well not the pepper sticks but the bulk sausage, hot dogs and summer sausage so that's the game plan for tonite. I wrap and freeze it myself. about a 70 dollar savings!

I actually woke up in a good mood and had a pleasant conversation with my 2 hounds.........well the wife too!!!!

Edited February 19, 2016 by smurfy

[RebelSS]

*ak*ffft*burp*    uhhhh...am I up?  Slept too hard. Musta been that pain pill I took. Windy and forty-something out, I can't read the T-mometer right now. Gotta wake up yet. Read the above posts, I can't follow them right now...Lucy in the sky with Diamonds syndrome. Someones not pregnant? Shotgun's blasting? When's the wedding? Who's doing whom?  In the am over coffee?? Someones talking to hounds?? Cripes...now we have the Hound Hollerer, alongside the Lab Levitater. You guys are jumping around like squirrels in a nut factory. I can't follow all this... It's all melding together. Speaking of melding, another great reason to NEVER eat those filthy little chopped garden hoses, green beans.....

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/snake-head-found-in-can-of-green-beans-626049091705

Edited February 19, 2016 by RebelSS

[leechlake]

34 minutes ago, smurfy said:

morning...............its Friday....................boars probably hung over. and still hasnt caught I fish!!!! LL, congrats on the 99 days!!!!!

also LL, advice from a union guy......if you clean up that doo-doo weekly its not so bad it the spring!!!!! now that its light out when I get home from work I go out twice a week to do the doo-doo duty!!!!!!!

butcher shop called yesterday, our venny products are done, well not the pepper sticks but the bulk sausage, hot dogs and summer sausage so that's the game plan for tonite. I wrap and freeze it myself. about a 70 dollar savings!

I actually woke up in a good mood and had a pleasant conversation with my 2 hounds.........well the wife too!!!!

I don't pick up the doo very often, wife does.  I don't know how that happened but I will take it.  One year way back when I decided to pick the stuff up and put it in a garbage can in the back yard.  I was thinking one day I would throw the frozen stuff away in the big garbage can.  Day like today or so I realized I'd waited too long.  Snow that had stuck to doo and heat and in a plastic garbage can that weighed too much to move   Do your best not to imagine what the inside of the can looked like and I had to clean it out 5 gallon pail at a time.  Should have called the honey wagon.

 

[RebelSS]

You need to get Smurfo the Hound Hollererer over there, and you two can get into the inner minds of those levitating Labs, and train them to clean up.....

[bobberineyes]

Mornin fellers,  break time almost over then  back  at it. 40 and rain here, pretty sad when 40 feels good, not much of anything else in the plans besides brining more salmon today and possibly a trout fillet  ( if the Mrs grabs one today). Gotta go....see ya!!

[Dotch]

Active group this a.m. Coffee has coffee again, Swivel will be digging for his swivel later, LL dodges a bullet (or Mrs. LL did), smurfy has turned into Dr. Doolittle, Reb was out too late with Jim Morrison, and bobber is working (while his wife is fishing!?!?). Tires me out just thinking about all the energy being expended.

Been a little slower start today. Mrs. Cheviot left early for work to do flowers for a funeral. Kinda like doing chores myself sometimes. I'm a detail guy so I sorta follow around and pick up the aftermath behind Mrs. Cheviot whose idea of chores is throwing feed at a couple pens and going in the house.

At least there's one constant: The office pest has arrived. Figures. After the Gopher men's BB team upset Maryland last night I figured he'd be in to discuss the game ad nauseum. I watched it also or parts of it and I can read box scores, etc. Oh well at least he's obnoxious.

The yard is melting off nicely. My diligence with the tractor and bucket should pay dividends. The fly in the ointment or turd in the punchbowl is that the dog poo that is accumulating. That's one good thing about living in the country: Moving the snow also moves the dog poo. Looks like the ice fishing is coming to a screeching halt soon. Probably not a bad idea to get the houses off the lakes soon. 

I don't know if this would help you LL but this is something we use with the sheep so we know when they're bred. 

[smurfy]

you have a morning pest.....................we have REB!!!!!!!!!!!!

[RebelSS]

43 minutes ago, Dotch said:

 

 

WTH is that!?!??!?!  BDSM sheep??!?!  Now I've seen everything!!  Good lord, what next will be discussed on the good morning thread.......Smurfy, cover yer eyes, lest ya get all revved up. 

Edited February 19, 2016 by RebelSS

[leechlake]

This whole sheep thing has me stuck with a bunch of questions but I have a comment but you can answer the comment since I'm sure it's wrong.

I have a customer and we talk almost every morning.  They start at 630am and we usually talk by 7am.  We also fish together a lot and are friends.  He tinkers with about 20 some cattle every year and for years always was talking about "chores".  Dale Carnegie wouldn't approve of that name btw.  It seems very negative since the term chore has turned into a negative.  "It was a chore even looking at the woman by buddy set me up with."  See?

Anyway, this guy talked about chores all the time like he was performing brain surgery and it sounded very hard and time consuming.  One year we went bow hunting down at his place and after hunting one night (I shot a buck in the first 20 minutes which was nice) we went to do chores.  We went in the barn and grabbed two 5 gallon buckets of corn  and about a half a square bail of hay and dumped it in a feeder.  We were done.  Huh?

I never said anything to him about this chore thing.  I'm sure there's some cleaning out barns, prepping the corn in the bucket (tough deal there), and the hay thing in the Summer but this chore thing seemed easier than vacation.  

I am going to ponder something I do every day and call it "doing chores" because I really think it's bomb!

 

[smurfy]

city people!!!!!!!!! chores are more commonly know as the work that is required by a farmer on a daily basis to keep his animals fed, cleaned and/or milked in order to provide food and shelter for his family!!!!!!!!!!

 

understand now!!!!!!!!!! 

[RebelSS]

Just now, smurfy said:

city people!!!!!!!!! chores are more commonly know as the work that is required by a farmer on a daily basis to keep his animals fed, cleaned and/or milked in order to provide food and shelter for his family!!!!!!!!!!

 

understand now!!!!!!!!!! 

Good lord....a superb answer, from SMURFY, yet!! Amazing!!!   

[smurfy]

25 minutes ago, RebelSS said:

Good lord....a superb answer, from SMURFY, yet!! Amazing!!!   

well what did you really expect??????????? a boar type answer?????????

[Dotch]

Raining here now. BTW, Boar just p.m.'ed me. He was wondering if that sheep equipment would help him increase his pouting prowess. Ya right...

Anyway, concerning the "chore thing". I can only speak for our relatively primitive operation. How "bad" chores are varies with the operation, type of livestock, the weather and time of year. If you're just feeding a few head of feeder cattle, some show pigs, lambs, etc., it's no big deal. You're right LL, throwing the feed at them and going in the house is a piece of cake. You do have to keep an eye out for the critters that are feeling under the weather, check the mineral feeder, make sure they have clean fresh water, etc., but otherwise it ain't bad. And if you're like some guys, it's somewhat automated so much of it can be done from the comfort of a cab.  Not at our ranch however. 

Right now, we're kind of in an interim stage. We have 3 basic sets of animals right now: There's a ram by himself, a group of 10 ewe lambs, 4 of which will be residing in white wrappers in the freezer come the end of the month, and there are 36 brood ewes along with a ram in another group. Chores right now in the big barn consists of feeding the ram with a hanging feeder of grain 2x a day & a partial slab of hay, feeding the 10 ewe lambs grain and about 1/4 bale of hay 2x a day, giving all of them clean water, feeding the cat in the a.m. and you're done. The 36 ewes + 1 ram are being fed a large round bale of hay, which for about 2 - 3 days requires just looking at it. After a few days they've chewed the bale in from the sides, allowing me to peel hunks with the pitchfork off the top, placing it in 5 smaller mangers so they don't waste as much and they all have access. At night, they get a couple buckets of cracked corn/screenings. Snow complicates matters of course and we've been lucky so far this year. Isn't always the case. The 60 gallon water tank needs to be filled about every other day now. Fine when the weather is warm because you can use the hose from the hydrant in the well pit. When it's been cold, I haul water from the barn in 5 gallon pails. Minimum of 8 if you want to keep up with their daily consumption now, 14 if you want to fill it. With the hose, you have to be sure the ewes don't pull the hose out of the tank while you're off doing something else. And as I alluded to, you want to stay on top of things so you really need to be watching the animals closely while chores are going on. Meds are not cheap and calling the vet generally isn't an option unless it's an extremely valuable animal. You must become your own vet for most situations. About the only thing I won't attempt is C-sections.

If you're birthing animals, it becomes a whole 'nother ballgame and those fun and games are about to start for us. When the lambs are born, it means separating the ewe with lamb(s) from the group and putting them in a small pen (called a "jug") so we know that they're off to a good start. That also means separate hay, grain and water for the ewe 2x a day. Sorta like room service. Start doing that with a dozen or so and what was taking 15 - 20 minutes 2x a day suddenly swells to an hour or more. And if there are complications, plan on a sizable chunk of your day missing. After a few days in those small pens, tails on the lambs are docked, we put in ear tags, give shots and move the ewe with lambs down to the big barn to a loafing area. That way we have room for more ewes giving birth in the small barn while the week or so old lambs can get started on some solid feed. It helps speed things up because the animals that were being fed in single pens are able to be fed in a group again. That process will keep happening for the next 6 weeks to 2 months. Then hopefully there is pasture so the ewes and lambs can be weaned, with the ewes going on pasture and the lambs staying behind in the lot, or the cream of the crop in our case goes on the road to compete as show stock. Sometime in between when the ewes go on and come off pasture, hay, other feed and straw need to be procured or spoken for the winter as the cycle repeats itself. Oh yeah, I have a "real" business to operate off farm while I'm at it. Trying to squeeze all this stuff in sometimes becomes a challenge. 

I'll try to provide some photos of some of this as we progress through the process. It may make a little more sense.    

[RebelSS]

May blow away yet down here...just a roarin'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just saw three squirrels tumble by........

 

 

Wind Advisory

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LA CROSSE WI
936 AM CST FRI FEB 19 2016

...STRONG WEST TO NORTHWEST WINDS TODAY...

.STRONG WEST WINDS OF 30 TO 40 MPH...GUSTING TO 60 MPH..ARE
EXPECTED ACROSS NORTHEAST IOWA AND EXTREME SOUTHWEST WISCONSIN
TODAY. ELSEWHERE...WINDS OF 25 TO 35 MPH ARE EXPECTED WITH GUSTS
APPROACHING 50 MPH AT TIMES. LOOK FOR THE WINDS TO SUBSIDE LATE
THIS AFTERNOON.

 

Edited February 19, 2016 by RebelSS

[leechlake]

thank you, that is really interesting to a city feller for sure.  I think my lab could get along with the ewes messing up the hose situation when you're trying to fill the tank.  

Remember, if you continue my education I had to pause for a second and think of what a "ewe" was so take that into consideration.   A ram is a boy, a ewe is a girl, and a lamb is a baby.  See?  I get it.

Question for next time?  The brood ewe has a baby, I'm guessing 50/50 it's either a ram lamb or a ewe lamb.  What happens to most of the ram lambs?  I'm betting mostly it's not good to be a baby ramalamba?  White paper burial not to far in the future?  Ewe baby has a better shot of being kept around to produce more lambs?

I really have no clue about this stuff but find it really interesting.  This may be worthy of a non side tracked thread but we can play it out here until Smurf screws it up

 

1 hour ago, smurfy said:

city people!!!!!!!!! chores are more commonly know as the work that is required by a farmer on a daily basis to keep his animals fed, cleaned and/or milked in order to provide food and shelter for his family!!!!!!!!!!

 

understand now!!!!!!!!!! 

hey dingaling...I know what a chore is but my experience was that the chores weren't as taxing as they guy let on to be. He told me he couldn't go up north fishing some times because he didn't have someone to do the chores and the answer isn't that he didn't want to go fishing with me.  Chore this, chore that.  It was as simple as feeding a dog when I was there. (no disrespect Dotch, I got what you wrote)

I've got more on the cows this guy was raising but for a few of you Simpletons I will keep it focused.  I know your minds wander.  I wonder how Boar is doing?  He's kind of in my stomping grounds and it makes me nervous.

[RebelSS]

Looks like the wedder morjits are a bit off again on their predics....upper 40's, almost 50* was the fcast for today. It's gone from 42* when I got up to 34* right now, dark sky, and howling winds. Garbage cans and stuff blowing down the street....

[Dotch]

2 hours ago, leechlake said:

thank you, that is really interesting to a city feller for sure.  I think my lab could get along with the ewes messing up the hose situation when you're trying to fill the tank.  

Remember, if you continue my education I had to pause for a second and think of what a "ewe" was so take that into consideration.   A ram is a boy, a ewe is a girl, and a lamb is a baby.  See?  I get it.

Question for next time?  The brood ewe has a baby, I'm guessing 50/50 it's either a ram lamb or a ewe lamb.  What happens to most of the ram lambs?  I'm betting mostly it's not good to be a baby ramalamba?  White paper burial not to far in the future?  Ewe baby has a better shot of being kept around to produce more lambs?

I really have no clue about this stuff but find it really interesting.  This may be worthy of a non side tracked thread but we can play it out here until Smurf screws it up

Yup a ram is a boy, as is a "buck", a term used interchangeably with ram, a ewe is a girl, lamb is a baby or young sheep less than a year old, so ya, you're getting this nomenclature down.

Odds are yes, close to 50:50 ratio of ewe lambs to ram lambs. For whatever reason, we've tended to have more ewes than rams. Our ram lambs are usually left intact, not castrated. They convert feed to meat better than a wether (castrated ram) and one never knows for sure when they're small (with a group of breeding sheep anyway) if they're potential stud ram material. Plus there's a demand in the ethnic market for intact ram lambs, especially the smaller breeds like ours. They can eat them; I'd rather not. Ewe lambs definitely have markedly better odds of staying on the place for sale as breeding stock or replacement ewes. And they are flexible. If you have some that are so-so, not up to par as replacement ewes they still taste good on the Weber! 

You ask good questions and they are sincere. Keep it up and you and Mrs. LL could find yourself with some ewes for a starter flock. And I know just where you could find some! 

Sad note: Checked the ewes at lunchtime and one ewe had lambed. Buck lamb was all licked off but dead when I got there. Not that I'm superstitious but it's not usually a good omen to start the lambing season off like that.   

[leechlake]

I just said my first prayer ever for a lamb and you and your sheep.  The humor I was deriving from this just ended.  Hope the other ones all make it.

[Dotch]

It's OK. Not the first time this has happened and certainly won't be the last. They are sheep and as such are a renewable resource. 

[smurfy]

6 minutes ago, Dotch said:

It's OK. Not the first time this has happened and certainly won't be the last. They are sheep and as such are a renewable resource. 

when's the funeral???????

[Dotch]

Probably when the compost pile thaws out or if the U of M vet students are down this way and are looking to post something.