Time vs. Profit for small farms

Anyone who farms, even as a hobby, quickly figures out that there is such a thing as 'economies of scale' and this applies to us at the moment. Let me start by describing our day during the lambing season:

6am  First check of ewes.
10am Check ewes, feed & water
2-5pm Check ewes, top up water, walk dog for an hour, chores and check sheep before leaving
10-12pm Final check, feed & water 


Doesn't seem to bad does it? If we have a ewe that seems a bit iffy then I'll stay longer to keep an eye on things so that could mean spending the night in the barn, a chilly proposition in this weather. Thank goodness for a wood stove and lots of herbal tea. (Only thing you need is a toilet if you drink too much tea!)  Here's the schedule once we have lambs born because we know we'll be bottle feeding some of them:

2am.  Check and feed youngest lambs
6am.  Check and feed lambs, check ewes
10am Check and feed lambs, check and feed ewes, clean water, clean pens.
2pm.  Check and feed lambs, check ewes, walk dog
6pm.  Check and feed youngest lambs, check ewes and feed them again.
10pm.Check and feed lambs, check ewes

Feeding times of lambs vary depending on their ages and also on their vigour, obviously a lamb taking the bottle well will drink more at a feeding and so will eat less frequently. And once they begin to eat a little hay and some pellets they will need less milk feeding too and most lambs will only be bottle fed for one month before being transitioned to hay, grass, pellet and water.

So what, you may be asking, does this have to do with economies of scale? Well, Right now I am checking the sheep every 4-6 hours and sometimes I just stay out at the barn for several hours so that I effectively cover 2 time periods and only have to drive out there once. But I spend the same amount of time feeding 5 ewes as I would if I were feeding 25 or even 50 ewes. And the same amount of checking night and day is required regardless of numbers. The same goes for chickens or really any livestock kept together in a flock. Horses require mucking of individual stalls so they are a little different, but even cows if kept loose in a byre will show economies of scale. You get more work done (ie. more animals checked and fed) in the same time it takes to do just a few animals. Make sense? So it's about the same amount of work to keep 5 chickens as it is to keep 50.

It's this economy of scale that has led to time-efficient, large scale commercial farming where they keep 20,000 chickens together in a barn. or 500 cattle in a feedlot. For them, it's the most economical and time efficient way of doing business. But here on a small farm it's totally different. My sheep aren't just numbers...they're Dolly and Sweetpea and Freckles. Faces with a name and a history. And that's where the difference between a small farmer and a commercial one come into play. Small scale farmers have a closer attachment to their animals because they spend time with them and form relationships of trust, care and even love. I'm not saying all commercial producers don't respect their animals, because many of them take fantastically good care of their stock, but it's different when they're at your small home farm.

Obviously then there's a need to find balance between your goals as a farmer and the amount of work required in order to optimize your resources and time is a valuable resource that small farmers often overlook. Because we don't pay ourselves it's not something we see as an expenditure, but unless you have a balance between your work, farming, home, and relationships, something will suffer.

It's easy to get carried away doing good things and being productive but I'd like to encourage you all to have a plan in mind, and to strive to find a balance so that no one area of your life suffers. Relationships are easy to neglect, sleep is another aspect that's easy to let slip especially at lambing time, trust me I know, so just do what you can and try to have a plan in place and follow it. In addition to what looks like a busy shepherding schedule I still have church responsibilities, laundry, housework, meals to prepare, homework to supervise and all the day to day things I do by myself because my husband works out of town during the week. I sure appreciate his help and the extra sleep I get on the weekends when he's here!

A plan is important if you are bottle feeding lambs. Younger fellows feed less milk at each feeding but more frequently say 5-6 feeds a day of 85 ml whereas older lambs may only eat 2 or 3 bottles a day but drink 500 ml at one shot. It's important to keep track so that you know how much to feed to whom and how often. You're responsible for helping them to grow healthy and strong while avoiding scours from over feeding. Once our lambs are a little older we use a bucket for feeding that has 5 nipples and cold milk inside. They can eat whenever they like and because the milk is cold it doesn't go bad and it stops the lambs from eating too much at one time and making themselves sick. Also, because they're not all eating at the same time it is more time efficient and one bucket with 5 nipples can be used by multiple lambs. This is a picture of one of the nipples that comes with a feeding bucket. They contain a ball valve to prevent back flow and to stop the milk from all running out the bucket when the nipples are not being used. Very handy!

Well, guess what...it's time for me to get to the barn and check my sheep again.

Sheep Week

I think since we're waiting around on lambs and generally focusing on our sheep at the moment that I'll dedicate this next weeks worth of posts to everything SHEEP. Sound good?

So let's talk about my sheep.

I have Rideau Arcott ewes and they are a Canadian breed of sheep that was developed at Agriculture Canada's Animal Research Centre in Ottawa, Ontario. Because of that they are often called Rideau ARCOTT indicating their origin, A R C Ottawa. The breeding program was started in 1966 and through strict controls of genetics and breeding they developed 3 breeds of sheep, the Rideau, the Canadian, and the Outaouais Sheep. They were originally bred with the goal of producing sheep that would lamb rapidly, every 8 months, so that they could be used for research purposes. After all was said and done the resulting sheep were released to farmers all over the country and are now quite common as commercial breeds. Rideaus in particular are really a meat breed but have some other great characteristics such as their ability to lamb every 8 months, their medium quality fleece and their ability to raise an average of 2.5 lambs every 8 months. We'll keep our cross bred ewe lambs and cross them back to another Rideau ram in the late fall to have 75% Rideau lambs the following Spring. The choice of ram is really important because the ram contributes 50% of the genetics to your resulting lambs. Some rams sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars but for our purposes we'll find a nice looking local boy to trade for or we'll keep an eye out at the livestock sales.

The breed's genetic mix is 40% Finnish Landrace, 20% Suffolk, 14% East Fresian, 9% Shropshire, 8% Horned Dorset and the last 9% is made up of Border Leicester, North Country Cheviot, Romnelet and Corriedale. Each contributes different characteristics such as hardiness, meatiness and non seasonal breeding. This mix makes them good mothers and by breeding them to a terminal breed (meat breed) such as a Texel or a Suffolk you get good lambs for market. Our girls were bred to a Suffolk and a Dorset Horn so we'll see what we get for lambs. Both fathers have distinctive looks and so we'll be able to tell who fathered whom. But both should produce hardy and fast growing meaty lambs.

So there you have it, the provenance of our ewes. We'll keep good records of how many lambs they each have and how they do raising them. Also how the lambs grow and mature. Records are really important and help a shepherd to make good decisions that improve the quality of his flock and keep them healthy and strong. Some record keeping such as tagging their ears is also required by law.

Moving Day for the Ewes

Yes, we finally got the sheep moved from the old barn to the new one so they have more room, a door they can see out of, and as of later today they'll even have lighting! I'm going to unhook the battery from the electric fence because it's not hooked up at the moment anyways and I'm going to use the inverter to power everything. Sounds complicated but it's really simple.The battery comes home with me once a week and goes onto the charger for a nice slow charge, then 12 hours later it's back out to the barn where we clip on the 300watt inverter ($24 at Canadian Tire on sale) and then it's good to power all sorts of lights, and really anything electrical that we need. Lighting in the barn is simple, I have a strand of LED Christmas lights down one side that are a warm and gentle source of light and use very little power and I also have a compact fluorescent work light with a long cord that I can use when I need a brighter source of light. Using a source of heat that's electrical would quickly drain the battery but an electric fence and some lights doesn't prove to be a problem at all. We have wood and a woodstove for heat so there's not much need for more than a 75watt inverter really but the larger one we have also has a USB port if the kids need to charge something and it came with the choice of having a cigarette lighter plug-in or just clips for the battery terminal and that works out well for me. But the real reason I have that one? It was cheap. I've kept my other little inverter in the original sheep shed so that if I want to power a fence for the chickens or pigs then I don't have to run a cord over the driveway, I can just get another battery.

The sheep seem happy in their bigger home with more room to stretch out. Jordan was a big help in getting them moved, especially since the weather wasn't very nice and we had to lead them over a frozen stream to the new barn. Thank goodness for the inducement of a bucket of grain. There were a couple of turn-arounds where the sheep just decided to head for their old home as well as a few slips and falls on the ice but we got everyone snug inside the barn without too many problems and no injuries. Now we have room for lambing and pens for bonding and there's room for me to keep my supplies and stay warm with the woodstove.

Absolutely Freezing!

It's -16 right now and -27 with the wind chill, so really not at all pleasant outside. The wind is blowing in off the Bay of Fundy and causing very fine snow to blow in sideways, like the lake effect snow we get in other parts of the country. Combined with the cold temperatures it's not pleasant at all outside and is just strengthening my resolve to get a North Country Cheviot ram for breeding in the fall to produce nice hardy lambs with lots of 'get up and go' vigour. Another thing I'll do is breed them later in the year so we'll be lambing once the grass has started to grow in March/April and the weather is better. But for now it's still important for us to keep a close eye on the sheep every 4-6 hours. Even though the roads are glare ice and horrid. Heck they even had to close the highway because of poor conditions and blowing snow, they just don't do a great job keeping up with the weather and scraping the roads clean sometimes. It's often the day after a storm that things get cleared and not during. Just different to other places I guess and lots of people just stay home in bad weather. That's one of the good things about farming...not much of a commute :) Still, we can't complain because the roads are usually ok and the cold weather doesn't last too long here, not like Edmonton or Winnipeg. We're really only cold after Christmas and through February.

Anyways, I'm off into the great white yonder to check on sheep again and make sure they've all got ice free waterers. Just trying to get Dave our roommate up so I can have another adult with me in case of accident. If not I'll have to wait a couple of hours for one of the boys to come back.

The girls are going to have a fun afternoon doing their homework and bringing more firewood in from the garage. At least working will keep them warm and the garage is covered so they will be out of the worst of the wind. I think 20 pieces each should do them in nicely.

Stay warm my friends!

The extension for the mobile and the barn in the background. It's cold, but pretty though. Not a lot of snow is sticking due to the cold temperatures and the 30-50km/h winds. The problem is that the snow is drifting and the roads are so icy.

Hard to see through frozen glasses all covered in ice and snow, yes, it's cold today.

Looking towards the road.

The sheep are all snug. I put a piece of wood over their door to block the wind and because their actual ramp/door is frozen to the ground....bad planning on my part.But they have plenty of straw, lots of hay and fresh water.

Lambing

A sure sign that Spring is coming are the appearance of lambs in the fields. Lambing time normally occurs once the grass is starting to grow, but there are some breeds of sheep that can breed year round and mine are some of them. Our ewes are Rideau ARCOTT developed here in Canada and we have one Charolais also. The farm that had them before us used to lamb 3 times in 2 years but for our own purposes we'll just lamb once a year in the Spring which means breeding them in late October/November. Of course we got our sheep already bred in September which means lambing time for us is now, when the wind is cruel and the snow is flying over the cold frozen ground. Still, I'd rather lamb in the snow than in the wet. Today we're going to hopefully get the sheep moved into their new barn and get some tarps over the roof. Roof first, then we'll figure out how to move the ewes. Bribery with grain seems to work well so I just won't feed them right away when I get there.

Because I don't know the exact day they were covered by the ram (bred) I can only guess at the day they'll deliver. I think 3 of them will be in the next 10 days so that means keeping a watchful eye every 4-6 hours, day and night so a ewe in distress isn't left too long before help arrives. It's not feasible for me to spend 24 hours a day there with only 5 sheep when I have children at home to look after. Next year will be a bit different because we'll have more sheep and we will be living on the farm by then so no driving will be needed.

Lambing time on a sheep farm is really an amazing time. If you'd like something interesting to watch I'll put up a video for a BBC2 show called Lambing Live and you will find 4 episodes to watch for 2011 and a series for 2010 too. They're fun and interesting, and you'll have a much better appreciation for shepherds! I guarantee you'll learn something too.



Well I'm back off to the barn, stay warm wherever you are!

Sheep and Lambing

Sheep are very hardy creatures generally speaking. Unfortunately for us the sheep we bought bred were bred early in the season to lamb mid-winter which means it will be cold, windy and most likely snowing. That's why it's important to have a draft free place for the ewes and their lambs until the weather improves. This week should see the roof ends finished on the barn as well as the skirting put in place. The boys and I can do some of these things during the week but we need to wait for Steve to do some of the others. The doors are all hung, the woodstove is installed along with it's chimney but with an open ended roof it's not really going to be much use until the roof is tight. Then if all goes well we can move the sheep into the new barn and into their jugs for lambing. Oh, a jug is the name for a small pen used for a new momma and her lambs, usually about 4x5 feet or so. They stay in individual pens to bond with their lambs for a few days and then they are let out to mingle with the flock again. This helps us as shepherds to look for lambs that aren't doing well and for other problems. It's also a good time to check their feet, give them any vaccinations they may need and just make sure that mother and babies are off to a good start.

How do you know when your lambs will be born? Add 145 days to your breeding date to calculate when lambs are expected although some breeds do vary by a week either side of that date. Here is a good gestation calculator you can print off.

How To Prune Apple Trees

Since my most recent post was about the new apple trees we're going to establish in the orchard I just know I'm going to get asked a ton of questions about pruning trees and this is a good time of year to be outside giving our trees a haircut.

Tools Needed: 
clean and sharp pruners, clippers or other suitable tool.
ladder if the tree is tall  
saw for older broken limbs (remove large branches in small pieces)

Pruning is actually very simple. The goal of pruning in young trees is to create an open and airy centre and branches that are well balanced ie. not all the branches are on one side making the tree unstable. This is accomplished by removing a third of each new branch every year just above an outward facing bud. This is important because you want the future branches to grow out away from the trunk. Does this sound confusing? I'll attach a link to a good website with pictures showing you what I'm talking about.

Once a tree is 5 or 6 years old it's just a matter of maintaining the health of the tree by removing broken or diseased limbs as needed. But management of your trees will vary a little depending on variety and location. As I learn more I'll add more information and I welcome any ideas you all have. Because our trees will be taller than most, we will be starting our first branches a little higher up the trunk than many other dwarf trees. This will allow for better air circulation at ground level and will make room for grazing sheep to munch away below the mature trees.

We have old apple trees on our property and we're in the process of clearing out the evergreens and shrubs that have taken over before we go in to trim the trees. We'll concentrate on removing dead wood and then seeing if the trees will respond to some love and care. I'm hopeful they will, there's something special and mysterious about a venerable old apple tree.