Farm Weekend

This is random photos taken over this weekend. Lambing is almost over and the lambs are growing fast.

This is Fandango and her twins.

Ears and her triplets. Ears is a 50:50 Jacob:BFL and the lambs are 25:75.

Dan burned the huge pile of brush and tree branches this weekend. He had been waiting for some rain to dampen everything else around and then we lucked out that rain followed the burn to help cool it down. That’s what’s left of the burn pile in the foreground and he has started to made rows out of the manure compost pile. We’re hoping that if we spread it out what little rain we get will help to dampen it thoroughly enough so that it will actual compost.

The burn pile is next to the ram pen and I saw Tamarisk a couple of times lying in positions that didn’t look quite right. Usually sheep sleep propped up on their chests. Maybe his horns just get too heavy to hold up and then he uses them as head-rests.

When you are at the ram pen you can’t help but notice how they have destroyed the fence. This is a double fence with welded wire panels on T-posts on the ram side and the electric fence on fiberglass poles on the ewe side. Those welded wire panels are stout but the rams have bent them into a mangled mess. We have bent these back into shape as much as possible, but this fence needs more work before breeding season comes around again.

Yesterday I noticed bird calls that I hadn’t heard before, and lots of them. There was quite a racket and I had never heard that many annoyed or angry birds before. I thought that some were crows but I couldn’t figure out if the rest were nesting birds trying to warn others away or what I was hearing. I told Dan that it would be a good background if someone wanted to make a jungle movie. I took my binoculars out and still couldn’t find the birds. I sent a recording to a birder friend of mine and she identified what I was hearing.

At first I thought the birds were in our trees along the fenceline, but then I realized that the sound was coming from the new almond orchard to the north. You can barely see through the trees and I hadn’t noticed it at first. It’s the elusive Soundtrack Bird.

Here is a clear view of it. That is a solar panel on a pole with a speaker above. They have two stations where they are playing recordings of a variety of birds. I’ve been doing some checking on line and found that birds can cause thousands of dollars of damage to orchards. Most of what I read talks about the damage later in the season but I suppose that since the almonds just finished flowering maybe they are trying to protect the newly forming almonds. One site said this: “Bird Gard harnesses the power of the natural survival instincts in birds to effectively repel them. Digital recordings of species-specific distress and alarm calls, along with the sounds made by their natural predators, are broadcast through high fidelity, weather-resistant speakers. These trigger a primal fear-and-flee response. Pest birds soon relocate to where they can feed without feeling threatened.”

We had no idea that is what we were hearing. I guess I was sort of right when I said that it sounded like a movie soundtrack. However I was thinking Amazon rainforest, not Vacaville almond orchard. It is a bit unsettling to be in the barn and hear this continually, although as Dan pointed out, it’s better than the cannon bursts that we hear in the fall when the crop is ready to pick.

The pasture seems to be a bit smaller now that all these lambs are out there. We’re sure hoping for some measurable rain with this storm. We need to keep this grass growing.

Those are triplet BFL-x lambs with their mom Jillian.

This is Foxy, one ewe who is still pregnant. Foxy and two ewe lambs are the only ones left to lamb and they are due in about a week.

Belle is the ewe my granddaughter showed as a lamb in 2019. This is her first lambing and she had twins. So this ewe lamb is my 6-year-old granddaughter’s lamb, and she wants to name her Beauty (in a Disney princess theme). She is the only one of the all the Jacob lambs born that doesn’t have the typical spotting pattern on her body but that’s OK—we’ll keep her anyway. Hopefully there will be a show where Kirby can take Beauty next summer.

Amelia and Ellie, the goats who both kidded last year. Amelia on the left is the only one who will kid this year—not until April.

The two adult goats on either side and the daughers in the middle. My hope is that we can get those two to Texas this year for my daughter’s family to raise.

To end on a sheep picture, this is Janna and her ram lamb.