Ridgetop - our place and how we muddle along

[Baymule]

The entrance and office look so nice! You sure have been working hard to get all that work done!

Fake grass and confused dogs!


I want pictures of all that awesome equipment you got! All these years of "block and tackle" working sheep and 1 day of playing with my sheep equipment and you went crazy on it! YAY for YOU!!! Pictures!!!

You are going to have to stuff a couple of ewe lambs in your RV next time y'all come to Texas, tails on please!

 

[Bruce]

You are going to hava a LOT of stuff to move to TX, I guess you'll need TWO moving trucks!

You can't see it but I removed and replaced all the oak moldings with white painted MDF.

Sorry, gotta ask. Why would you replace quality hardwood with (what I consider crap) MDF??

 

[Ridgetop]

More like 10 moving trucks - a convoy! With big signs saying "gone to Texas"!

The oak moldings in the office did not look right with the new flooring. I could not get golden oak looking vinyl plank. I could have painted the oak moldings, but the idea of painting quality oak that I sanded, stained and varnished 30 years ago went against the grain for me. The front entry never had moldings. Painting MDF was easier and cheaper than buying, staining and varnishing new oak. I only replaced the oak moldings in the office. I kept the old oak moldings and baseboards from the office. I had to replace a set of door casings in the main part of the house, so I used the ones from the office. I also need to replace a damaged oak baseboard in the family room and will use the baseboards from the office to do so. I can no longer match the old oak baseboards and door casings in new stock so I used the old ones that match. Since I am selling the house in another year or so, I did not want to invest in oak for the office. Besides several years ago we installed a set of floor to ceiling cabinets in the office (in addition to the closet) that are white - used from Habitat. Now the woodwork (except the entry door is all white. I can also use inexpensive panel doors from Lowes for the by pass closet doors and paint them white to match.

The baseboards in the office were a little short behind the door anyway, but I didn't bother to buy another piece of oak, stain and varnish it 30 years ago for the 3/4" gap in the corner. We were rebuilding the entire house at the time and short on time with 4 kids, a barnyard of livestock, 4-H activities, and DH working 6-7 day weeks.

I am in agreement with you though, normally I would have replaced the old oak with new oak, finished it and installed it, but I am getting old and tired and didn't want to spend the extra time finishing oak moldings. The oak throughout the rest of the house is not going anywhere. I have not had to paint moldings in 30 years due to my oak moldings! LOL I do have to scrub them periodically with TSP. Speaking of which my oak kitchen cabinets need a good scrubbing! LOL

As to buying the new equipment, at my age and physical shape, the right equipment will mean I can do a lot of the sheep work myself instead of having to drag DS1 or DH out with me to catch, hold, weigh, trim, vaccinate, or separate sheep and rams. It is often more exhausting rounding up "the boys" to help me than doing the actual work! I just have to put the alleyways together!

I had a lot of Sydell equipment at one time but sold most of it when DS2 and DS3 graduated from 4-H. The right equipment can make life so much easier. One item I have that I refuse to part with is my castrating stand from Sydell. It is a tube on a stand and you slip the kid or lamb in it feet first so it holds him securely for you while you band him. Since I like to vaccinate in the groin area (the friction of the legs rubbing o the injection site makes sure no lump forms) I used to used it for that too. The second vaccination and castrating at one time - easy peasy! I used to be able to do 30 at a time by myself. I would run them into a small catch pen (I had the equipment then) Grab and slide into the tube. I only had a problem once when the Boer kid had gotten a little large - he got stuck in the tube!

I still have most of the old show equipment stored in the barn. It will go to my grandchildren in Nipomo - show sticks for cattle, hog sticks, lamb sleeves, goat collars and show leads, etc. The newborn calf halters from the veal calves actually fit the large rams so I will keep those. I bought 2 new halters (now sold as leather ram halters) since I had misplaced the old ones after I disassembled them to soak them in neet's foot oil. Naturally I found them after I had bought new ones, used them!!! LOL The oil soaking did wonders for the leather - they are as good as new except for the gnawed ends of the leads where the calves used to chew them!

I would build a shed to hold the tilt table and scale, but don't want to do that much work and expense. Instead I am considering getting one of the large prefab vinyl sheds, and running the alley into it through the doors, then attaching the alley to the scale and tilt table, then cutting an opening through the back out into the alleyway and sorting gates some how. Actually now I think about it, I could use the sorting gate to turn the sheep into either the scale or tilt table . . . . Too complicated maybe? I really only want to protect the scale from dust, and to be in the shade when working. Perhaps A/C? I can dream too!

By the way -
Is anyone looking for trained LGDs? Angel's breeder, Debra, has 2 of Angel's brothers (now just 1 year old) that she has trained and is looking to sell. She has not asked me to sell the dogs for her, I am letting people know about them since our Angel is so awesome. The dam is a Lucky Hit bitch, and the sire is out of a Turkish import. Debra also videos her training and puts it on u-tube so you could probably see the dogs working. Debra lives in Idaho and her dogs defend her Dorpers and dairy goats against cougar, bear, WOLVES, foxes and coyotes. She makes her living selling meat and dairy products at Farmer's Markets so the 7 dogs protecting her flocks are really life and death for her.

I hope this is not considered an ad since it is not meant that way, nor do I get anything from it other than satisfaction helping someone find an awesome trained LGD. There are so many bad LGDs out there that finding a good one is a joy. Maybe this will help someone.

Here are pix of my new "grass"! Still have to raise the block planter wall, fill it with new dirs./manure/planter mix and plant my roses - with the roots wrapped in wire. The planters are lined with wire already but why tale chances? The garden will be moved to the other side of the house here the tree fell over and we had the roots removed. Raised planter beds lined with wire - pesky gophers! Top picture is front of house from road - you can hardly see the grass because I had to stand in a bad spot since the sun was glaring into my camera lens. Next pic is front of house looking out onto the road. Then next 3 pics are of the lawn at the end of the patio looking towards sheep area on other side of bushes and fence. Final picture s looking around back of house - sheep teepee shelter is in view on left.

Green stuff! And we don't have to water it and pay the fiendish water tax the liberal dems have foisted on us - take that Gov. Newson!

 

[Baymule]

I love it! If it gets faded from the sun, spray paint it! My Daddy raised Christmas trees, they are sprayed with a special paint to keep the needles from falling off when they are cut. One year he had paint leftover, so he sprayed the front yard, it was all nice and green!

Lamb tube? Can you post a picture?

 

[B&B Happy goats]

Absolutely love your new lawn !

 

[Bruce]

I kept the old oak moldings and baseboards from the office. I had to replace a set of door casings in the main part of the house, so I used the ones from the office. I also need to replace a damaged oak baseboard in the family room and will use the baseboards from the office to do so. I can no longer match the old oak baseboards and door casings in new stock so I used the old ones that match.

Phew!, glad they were saved to be reused.

I am in agreement with you though, normally I would have replaced the old oak with new oak, finished it and installed it, but I am getting old and tired and didn't want to spend the extra time finishing oak moldings.

I hear you on the getting old and tired part. Still I think for the sake of the future owners I would have at least bought pine and painted that rather than sawdust and glue board. But it isn't my house!

 

[Ridgetop]

I keep getting different thing from different people. Half say that someone will buy the house to live in others say some one will buy to tear down and build 4-6 houses on the property. No point in putting in too much money when we want to move to Texas next year after the wedding.

Angel has to go back to the kennel again. She apparently had a false heat in September/October, and is now in definite heat, the hussy. Aside from a hugely swollen vulva, Bubba now is interested in her. She is interested back. Yesterday Bubba, quite a gentleman, gently was positioning her to DO THE DEED! She was very happy, flagging her tail! When she sat down he tried to nose her up to a standing position. Hopefully she did not get bred in the past few days when I thought we were completely safe. She is barely a year old now. However, like Erick said if she did get bred, at least they are both great working dogs and both Anatolians. She is also a beautiful bitch, just too young. We will see in about 60 days anyway.

We have starting emptying out our rental Connex. It went very fast since the first 5-6 feet were huge boxes of Christmas decorations! For some reason Christmas decorations are so bulky! Anyway, we just put those straight into the empty Connex while we sorted out and moved stuff we were keeping from the rental to the partially filled one. We found a lot of stuff belonging to DD1 which I schlepped over to her. There is also more of DD2's stuff out there. Her future FIL is coming down to empty their current storage unit and drag everything up to Big Bear to a new storage unit. At least it will be out of mine. We still have DS1's and DS2's stuff from their previous apartments stored but hopefully DS2 will move his junk to another storage unit after he get married. I am being very harsh on what I keep and what I toss and donate. I actually found a pretty pair of small scale blue velvet French knuckle chairs that used to be in my bedroom. I forgot they were in there. They can go to my children or to the thrift store. Although thrift stores are getting pretty choosy these days. If worst comes to worst, we will call for large item pickup (DS3's dump trailer went home ) and put them at the curb. Someone will probably grab them and take them home. Like I say, at least they won't be in my storage unit. I also have a really nice knotty pine captain's bed that I refinished years ago that is in beautiful shape and lots of storage. Perfect for a child's room. I tried to give it to DD2 for my oldest grandson (age 12) since she wants to move him into his own room. They did not want it. I guess I will post it on Craigslist. I wonder if I should post the 2 chairs too. I will see if DD2 wants them.

I got the paint for the spare bedroom (we just removed the captain's bed) and I need to patch the holes DD2 and DS2 each left in the walls from shelves, pictures, TV and computer cables, etc., etc. I hate the bright blue that DD2 painted the room. I am painting a quiet shade of sage green.

3:00 am and the smoke detector in our room went off! Got up, checked around, no smoke, fire, etc. so DH got the ladder (high ceilings) reset it and back to bed. Just fell asleep when it went off again. Same thing, ladder, reset, half an hour and off it went for the 3rd time! It was hardwired with a battery backup that was weak. So DH disconnected it but by now we had a hard time falling asleep again. This morning I noticed a strange buzzing in the hall. Another hardwired detector was making the strange noises so I got the ladder and took it down and took out the battery. Then I went to the shed and got several more smoke detectors (the last of my stash from the apartment) I put new batteries in the backup compartment of the first 2 detectors and a large alarm went off. I removed the batteries but the alarm kept going off. It was coming from the room where I had removed the detector, disconnected and no battery. It almost sounded like it was in the attic. I removed the crawl hole cover and looked around inside with my flashlight. It is too narrow to actually get in there. I couldn't see anything, except that the HVAC people had removed most of the insulation. I have a large bundle of insulation that I will shove in there though so no problem. The detector was beginning to deafen e so I went out to DH and DS1 who were working on the field and told them I had a problem with the smoke detectors. I thought maybe if one hardwired detector failed it would set off all of them but couldn't figure out why it kept going off in the room with the disconnected detector. DS1 said he would come and look. He said I was probably just thinking I had disconnected it and one was still connected. I told him that if he could find it I would give home $100! By then the noise was making me punchy. I walked back into the office where the noise was coming from and saw the light flashing on the NEW detector I had just unwrapped to install! It is one of those lithium sealed battery ones that are good for 10 years once you activate them. Somehow I had activated it when I unwrapped it! I walked out to tell DS1 not to bother - I saved myself $100! Anyway, I installed 2 new smoke detectors, 1 was still good, and I realized I needed 2 more in the other bedrooms as well as CO2 detectors so they will go in tomorrow. Luckily no fire or smoke!

Next I went outside and DS1 and DH were working on the field. DH was tractoring, and DS1 was setting up the alleyway and sorting gate. Grandchildren, 9 and 6, were "helping". DS1 and I held a spirited discussion about how to install the alleyway and sorting pen. Since our night fold is set up about 3 feet from the chain link yard fence, I decoded we would save a lot of money on panels by using that 3' runway as an alleyway. The darn sheep use it as an escape hatch every time we try to round them up and they don't want to go. We finally got it set up and it will send the trapped sheep into either the large night fold, or into a small catch pen. Once they are in the sorting chute, we can do shots, etc. We still have to decide where to put the scale and tilt squeeze. Tomorrow we will run the rams through the chute, vaccinate, and separate them out. Axtell will go back in the steep small pen with the ewes that have lambed. We will put in a 3' wide creep gate for the larger lambs. Then the other 2 rams will go down in the front pen. In another couple of weeks the ram lamb will go down there until we take him to Idaho to the buyer. Heading to Washington state so will drop him off. He is looking good, so hope to get some good photos of him for the buyer. The ewe lamb born around the same time is looking even better. So happy since she is a keeper. The others are still young, but looking really nice too. It s looking more and more like the 3 ewes that were in with Axtell did not take so they will lamb in January out of Lewis. One of my new ewes looks to be threatening a rectal prolapse when she lays down. When she gets up it goes back in. I really hope I don't have to cull her. We had a big Suffolk ewe that did that when she was pregnant. The pressure of the lamb when she was laying down seemed to cause it to bulge out. I would sew her up is it was a uterine prolapse but a rectal prolapse, not a good idea. Just have to wait and see. This is why I don't dock very short. I keep about 2" or so from the vulva. I will check the ear number and let Travis know.

Pictures tomorrow of my alleyway and sorting gate.

 

[Baymule]

As always, you are busy like a bee hive. LOL Pictures of the alleyway and sorting gate! Can't wait to see them! How about some sheep pictures while you are at it? You know we never get enough pictures!

 

[Ridgetop]

Pics? Here they are:
First is view of the funnel opening to the alleyway. It is situated immediately to the left of the new wooden gate from the driveway to the field. To the left is the kennel run and behind the kennel and to the right of the alley is the night fold which is made of 10' long 5' high 7 rail Red River rodeo arena panels. We had left a narrow walkway between the corralling and the chain link yard fence. This turned out to be (annoying and awkward as we chased sheep around and around in an attempt to get them to go where they preferred not to be .

Next is a closer vew of the alleyway where it begins with a guillotine gate. This gate ill have to be operated from ether the yard side of the fence or inside the night fold. Awkward, buy doable. A folding gate like Bay has (and one of which I have ordered for a separate alleyway to the scale or tit table) would be impossible to operate here since this alley has 5' fencing on each side.

As those precious brainless darlings enter the alleyway and the guillotine falls behind them they continue along 20'-30' of alley until they reach a right hand turn which will send them into the sorting gate. This picture is taken from the other side of the alley way. The yard fence is now on the right and the tall panels of the night fold is visble with the teepee shelter on the left.The short green panels can be unpinned to provide access to the alleyway from the small new holding pen attached.

Here is the alley turn showing the sorting gate attached to it at the end. The sorting gate has a head catch panel but Susan wouldn't let me take it since she said it was not made correctly. She is making another which we will pick up on our way back from Washington and Idaho after Thanksgiving. The catch gate panel is lie a goat stanchion headpiece - adjustable for different size sheep, designed to catch them and hold them steady in the sorting gate so you can do whatever unmentionable procedures are necessary. Since the sorting gates have multiple horizontal bars, these would not include hoof trimming or anything like that but that is what the tilt table/squeeze is for. The head catch will make vaccinating and drenching large ewes and rams easy though. Here is a front shot of the sorting gate box. A gate opens in or out on either side. This feature makes it easy to sort animals through the chute into pens on ether side, or you can open the gate in to use as a slanted side to shunt animals off into the chute from a pen.

Here is a front view of the sorting gate box. At the moment we have attached an arena panel across the open end until we get the head catch gate. Once the head catch gate is in place it can be adjusted to form a flat panel which will close the chute and with an open gate allow sending the flock through from one pen to another, or as a catch gate for individual animals. The catch gate will also esily unpin to form a 3rd gate straight head - Voila! a 3 way sorting system!

View of entire end run from inside the small catch pen.

 

[Ridgetop]

More pics!!!
Alleyway with sorting gate taken from inside large night fold, showing small catch pen on other side of sort gate. Additional shot of sorting gate and catch pen.

Shot of alleyway, sort gate and catch pen from other side of catch pen looking toward night fold.
Please note the bright orange hay ropes holding together parts of the fencing. This is an official form of fencing, known as 4-H fencing! It s often seen at homes of 4-H families, only varying in color of hay ropes!

Back later with sheep pics. Got an appointment.