Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

Mike CHS

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Teresa got me a new winter coat that is similar in design to what we wore when I was stationed at McMurdo Station Antartica. I actually had to shed a layer while I was cleaning up the stall this morning with the temperature at 12 degrees. It looks like the high today is going to be in the low 20's.
 

Bruce

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I would think anything adequate for Antarctica would be too warm for most of the Continental US. And obviously Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, Mariana Islands, American Samoa, USVI ;)

But I bet there were a lot of people stuck on I95 in VA that would have loved to have a coat like that.
 

Ridgetop

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Wind chill can be worse than ambient temps.

Our barn was first built for rabbits. We had over 100 "holes" (cages). Rabbits can take cold but not wind and rain. We sit on top of a ridge with the barn open to the steep gully behind. The wind would whistle up the side of the gully into the barn. Rain would blow in and get the nest boxes wet. After spending a day changing out shavings and straw every couple hours to save litters, I bought some heavy tarps. I took 1" x 2" lumber and stapled the tarps to them top and bottom. Then I screwed the top wood strips to the outside fascia of the barn above the openings. I draped hay ropes over the tarps when I screwed them up. During bad wind and rainstorms, I dropped the tarps and tied the bottoms down to keep rain out. During the summer I rolled the bottom of the tarps up and used the hanging hay ropes to tie the roll to the top to provide air circulation. Also during the summer, we had misters mounted around the edge of the barn which helped keep the temp down.

When we were still doing dairy goats, we had no siding on the barn. The wind would blow through the barn and drop the temp. Since the goats were in the bottom half of the barn (unlike the rabbits in their hanging cages) the wind and rain got the babies wet through the bottom of the barn openings. We stacked straw bales 2 high (120 lb. bales) as a wind block and hung heat lamps for the new kids. We had plenty of straw bales since we bedded the kids on straw and used it for the rabbit boxes. It worked well.

10 years we put siding on the driveway sides of the barn. During the past super hot summers the "widows" that open into the driveway get heavy sun during the afternoon. 2 summers ago, we had to put fans in the barn because the new lambs were panting and getting too hot from sun directly into their jugs. I used shade cloth and mounted it over those openings on the driveway. We left the lower edge open so we could open the shades for air circulation. The shade cloth is plastic (or polyethylene?) and also helps keep rain out of the jugs.

Not sure what we will do in Texas to control heat - possibly misters on the outside of the jugs. The new misters available put out so little water the mist dries before hitting the ground.
 

Mike CHS

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We brought all of the sheep in and checked weights and condition while we sorted lambs for the sale Monday. We also have a couple of yearling ewes that will be going then also. They have a history of being hard to work so after having to fight with them in the chute this time (again), they won't be given another chance. We raise big sheep for Katahdins and I prefer not to have to fight with a ewe that weighs as much or more than I do. They get handled a lot so if they are still that skittish at that age they don't fit with our system. We don't keep a lot of notes on our sheep other than the basics but their performance while being handled is tracked and isn't tolerated once they are old enough to have been in several times. All the ewes got a dose of Power Punch and garlic and two were given wormer based on the fecals we pulled last week.
 

farmerjan

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Don't blame you a bit @Mike CHS . We do the same with the heifers and they weigh about 3 times what we weigh. If they want to be stupid after being handled several times, they can go. Ones that don't like to come in aren't tolerated much either.
Hope your sales are good there on Monday. Too cold and wet here for selling this week....hoping by next weekend things will look better and we can get some of them out of the barn area, and then we can bring home the next group of heifers to put together a group for sale.
 

Mike CHS

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A few of the ram lambs looked like they were posing so of course, Teresa took advantage of it. The two in back were 64 and 67 pounds. Little Bit in the middle didn't get on the scale to be weighed but he is mid 50's and all at two months old.
 

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Ridgetop

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Great weights! Should do well at the sale. Let us know how you do. These are all Cooper sired lambs, right? Many of them out of Ringo dams? Do you register any of your sheep?

I agree about sending off the ones that are hard to work with. No pleasure in difficult nasty tempered animals. There is enough work with the sweet ones! LOL
 
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