The unexpected reshuffle, refencing, relocating

We had a visit last moth, from the county.  It turns out that in the middle of all the EFU (exclusive farm use) land at this end of the valley, is small blocks of RR zoned land (rural residential). And of course, RR land is not approved for farm use.  SO, to make a long story short... we reshuffled the farm!

The primary offenders were the chickens and the sheep.  Both had to move. So basically we swapped the garden area with the sheep pasture and chicken spot.  It worked out well in the end, perhaps even an improvement, but that was a chore.

the county was nice enough about it, giving us plenty of time to make the change, but mother nature wasnt so kind. a planted garden does not move well, and we must get seeds in the ground soon, so this whole reshuffle became an emergency so that we could have a garden this year.

So, a little fencing later, some late night hours moving chickens (who only move efficiently after dark) and everyone is settled into their new homes.We still need to figure out all the access routes for feeding and such, and get a couple thousand feet of water hose restrung, but the animals are resting happily in their new spots.

The lesson here? never assume anything!  We assumed that the land around us was zoned the same, but surprise!

Look closely, you can see the chicken trailer in the middle back, the sheep are on the pasture on the right, and the goats in the far back left behind the pigs. 

Last load of hogs transported to Foothill

We finally moved the last load of pigs to foothill to finish their growing season. This became an emergency with the three new litters on the ground. The "teenager" pigs keep pushing the piglets away to get to moms milk... and the piglets suffer. So off they go!

I am happy with our pig loading setup. We used it three times so far this season, with slight adjustments each time, and it worked amazingly well ! We were able to safely load a trailer load of pigs in record time! When I get a chance I'll take some pictures to show how we built the setup.

We also have a third generation setup at foothill for the electric movable pen. The first one had the heavy wooden corners, that arent necessary at foothill (because the ground there is soft).  The second had t posts but the pigs kept burying the lower electric line. The third one is improved so that they do much less burying.

This setup I am very happy with. one person should be able to set up a new pen, move the pigs, and break down the old one within a couple hours.  Its amazingly easy!   And so far no escapees! We now have a total of 38 pigs in various stages of growth in a pen that moves to fresh pasture once a week. I estimate that a third to half of their diet is grass, roots, and bug foraging with the other part being sprouted grain.  they get an abundance of minerals and probiotics by rooting around int eh fresh soil all day.  Happy pigs!

We will be posting pictures of the pasture pen setup soon also.

Yet another duck pen

Ducks are perhaps the hardest small animal to contain!  We have tried numerous types of fencing to keep them code enough to collect the eggs,  and all have failed.  So...  Here we go again!

This time we use 16 foot hard panels, arranged in a zip zag walked square, and lashed together tightly with baleing twine. Hopefully this will work.

Duck eggs anyone?

Ducks finally have a home!

We have been struggling with the ducks this year, trying to give them a free ranging containment system that protects them and yet allows them freedom, access to water, nesting boxes, and plenty of forage.  Today we set the girls into a test patch to see how they do.

It is 2 poultry nets strung together, with a fancy pallet and 2x4 door, out in the back of the pasture.  inside is a 4 hole nesting box setup with shade, and a sprinkler for misting and "puddling". That should provide them enough coolness for the summer while giving some water play but not creating soaked eggs nor killing the ground. We will move the sprinkler every day or two to keep it wet but not soggy enough to kill the grass from little trampling feet.

If this works out, we will have duck eggs available

You can see the pallet gate in this shot, and the test girls posing in their new home. If you look very closely you might see the sprinkler spray to the right of the gate. 

Here is the other half, where the nesting boxes are. 

And here is the nesting box setup, made from 4 5 gallon buckets and an old steel table with a roofing panel piece nailed to it. 

again!

Teaching kids life skill on a family farm

One of the huge benefits of the family farm lifestyle is being able to teach out children useful skill and principles firsthand.  Hunter spent a day learning about the physics of pulling tposts from the gro7nd with a tractor and chain.

How many wraps does it take to hold the post?

What angle should the chain be at relative to the bucket and post?

Is slack or tight a better starting position?

What is the most efficient manner to run through the motions?

What is required for safety?

It may be one skill,  but it is a host of principles and concepts to learn.  By the end of the day he was proud of his accomplishments and could pull a post safely and efficiently in about 30 seconds. 

The project was on the foothill property,  moving the sheep pen for fresh grass for the new arrivals.  Pictures soon!

Its the little things..

So, the way this works at Little Sprouts is twice each day we gather up the ladies (milking goats) and escort them one at a time into a holding area where they await their turn to enjoy treats and be milked. Lately one of our gals has discovered a new talent. She has figured out how to pull out the pin we use to latch our entrance and exit gates. Having two entrance gates it was a bit comical and only a small set back when she would enter the milking room before it was her turn. Keep in mind the rest of the herd were close behind her. About a week passed and she was bored with coming into the milking barn and decided to try her luck at the other gate. Needless to say... we spent some time sorting the girls that had already been milked from those who had been ever so graciously returned to the sunshine!
To my delight, Uncle Bradley has installed a new piece to the puzzle for the ladies to contemplate for the next while. Order has once again resumed in the milking barn.
Take a look at his design, we will be sure to let you know not if, but when they challenge us with their crafty nature!

Night time emergency!

Wow... Did that really happen? As i wake this morning the images of last night return.... A desperate flight across the valley with half sleeping kids in the car racing to save a life. This is farming?

To catch you up.....

Around 10pm we had just put the kids down and were relaxing after a long day of home deliveries in Ashland. Then... The phone rings. It's is was our farm hand and there is a problem. 

It was Rosemary, one of our best goats in the portable pen there. She had apparently poked her head with horns through the 4 inch squares in the fence, gotten stuck, fought so hard that she broke the 16 foot panel free, managed to slip her horns back through another square in the fence and ended up stuck under the panel trapped against the ground barely able to move or even breathe. Her neck was at such an awkward angle that her airway  almost blocked.

To make things worse, this apparently happened hours ago. She was already lethargic and weak. At first sight she seemed already dead. Rosemary could die soon from stress and lack of oxygen. So... Time for the Calvary!

We called in uncle Bradley to stop by Walmart and get a hack saw or bolt cutter and head out. He gladly sprang into action. We also decided to grab the farm bolt cutters and race over.

Brenda somehow managed to get 5 sleeping kids into the little sprouts buggy while i gathered tools and threw on some overalls. Within 10 minutes the 7 of us were racing to foothill in the dark.

Uncle Bradley got there first and ventured as far into the property as he dare with 2 wheel drive.

With All of our help we bent her head back and slipped the horns back through the fence. Finally she was free! Dazed, weak, but free and OK.

Whew that was a close call! But thanks to everyone's quick action it worked out. This is part of farming.

Two hours later we were all back home safe and sound. Ready to see what tomorrow might bring...

A new sheep containment idea under test

Sheep have proven to be the toughest animal to contain in our approach of smaller movable paddocks.  Feel free to search this blog to understand WHY  we use smaller constantly moving paddocks mimicking the herding action seen in nature. This post is not about why,  but how,  specifically with sheep!

Sheep,  at least our heritage Jacob sheep,  do not respect electric fencing.  We have tried numerous designs and all but one approach fail to contain.  The one is based on very tight lines with permanent end posts.  Perhaps it would be possible to train them to respect electric,  but our sheep seem pretty smart,  they know that if they leap through they seldom get shocked. Their wool lessens the pain to be more of a nuisance than a deterrent. So we finally gave up on electric.

This year we have the new property for the sheep,  so we need a paddock to contain 60 to 80 with movable hard fencing.  The first one was built using tpost driven in and 50 inch hard combination panels.  It will contain them and isn't to bad in labor to move...  But required a tractor there to remove that tpost for every move.

Then an idea...  Why not build a free standing hard panel fence system?  Movable without a tractor,  yet hard fencing you can move by hand.  Sound perfect,  right?

So...  I finally convinced myself to buy that welder I have wanted for so long!  Time to build with metal!   After a lot of research I decided on an old fashioned oxy-acet welder.  Good anywhere without electricity ,  costs less,  and can both cut and weld in one unit. Now  honestly,  I have not welded since highschool...  So that is a bit concerning...  But hey..  Gotta start sometime!

A little u tube instruction,  some practice,  a larger welding tip,  and we are making fence prototypes!   It took a few versions to get a workable idea but I think we have something!

This is based on 6 foot tposts.  I cut one in half and cut a slot halfway down it on one side.  This makes 2 support braces.  Then weld a full tpost one brace,  by sliding the edge of the full post into the brace at right  angles a few inches from the bottom of the full post.  I can make a nice 3 point weld this way for strength.  The result is a full sized post with a piece going front to back a few inches from the ground point.

In the pasture,  you take this assemble,  step on the never to drive the post a few inches in the ground,  paid the supported right angle to the fence line.  Then hard panel sections are attached with heavy duty wire tires.  In minutes,  without a pounder or tractor you have a self standing,  movable,  hard wire paddock!

For an initial test I built one 16 x 32 for the 3 mini nubian goats.  These guys are pretty hard on fencing and will not the first opportunity the see.

After assembly I decided the long 16 for panels had to much unprotected span  and installed a single full size post at a 45 angel,  with a single wire tie.  This really helped stabilize the sides.

It worked!  Except that in the first move I realized some flaws in ease of use.  Corners were tough and had to be fully removed. More work then I wanted,  so I made a corner by bending a wire panel at 90 degrees in the middle (easily done by hand).  Then posts are only installed on the long sides...  No more corner posts!

To help stabilize the corners,  I made sure to overlap each panel one square and attack extra wire tires on the end of the overlap as well as the post a square back.  This helps stabilizer the corner by adding some weight of the long side to the corner if the corner is lifted by am escaping occupant.

I'm pretty happy with where this ended up..  A few days will tell for sure.  For now aesop,  rosemary,  and besty have volunteered to test it.  No escapes yet!

Here are  some pics of the test paddock

Getting ready for winter breeding

Lots of changes around here this week! Let's recap:
Processed a few more turkeys, all toms not needed for breeding. These toms look excellent! All consistently large with good fat content. We have a few more to go before we retire the processing equipment for the winter. Some turkeys will be available for sale through the winter as frozen.
To facilitate processing we finally put a real shelter over the equipment creating a mostly closed area. Even have a little propane camp heater to warm up by! This makes the experience much more comfortable. I remember three years ago learning how to do this on a card table in the freezing rain. How far we have come!
The turkey numbers are now small enough to fill only one turkey breeder coop. That frees up another coop. We have split the next chicken flock into his and hers living quarters. These chickens were getting much too big to all fit in one! There are 270 or so birds total. Now the hens can mature into laying hens and the boys can fatten up for heritage meat chickens using our soy free broiler chicken ration. These will be our first meat chickens for sale.
We also moved the ducks into the old pig pen. They are easier to protect from predators here, and mostly will stop escaping the pasture and ruining our back yard! Ducks wreck havoc on lawn grass! The smaller area can be lighted so egg production will climb again. Also this area is destined to be next years garden so what the ducks leave behind will be gold to the plants!
Next steps are adding lighting to turkey coop, chicken coop, and duck pen to get egg production going. Also we still need to design some laying boxes for these new pens and get the solar winch rebuilt and working.
Never a dull moment!

Extra Large Turkey Brooder

With the turkey eggs due to hatch next week, we needed a place to raise the young birds. Our regular home built brooder does not have enough room to house 100+ birds, so we decided to build a new one, supersized! Instead of building a brooder itself, we converted a stall of the barn into a giant brooder. This gives them a nice 12x12 space to explore, grow, and run around.

The conversion was easier than expected. I simply screwed a support 2x6 on each wall (2x6 is an overkill but I had those on hand, they are the normal stall divider walls). Then put one right across the middle. The old metal roofing panels from the chicken coop (see a previous post) are exactly 12 feet long so they fit nicely as a ceiling. That provided a nice solid metal ceiling to keep predators (cats) out. Then I covered the front bars with chicken wire, and the door also. That completed a safe space. For bedding, first I used a bale of straw to cover the bare ground, then about 6 large bags of shavings. That gave a base of 4 to 6 inches across the entire floor. A 2x12 across the bottom of the doorway served to hold the bedding in while opening the door.
The heat is provided by two hanging 250Watt heat lamps and reflectors. They are hung on bailing wire from two nails in the center ceiling brace. An extension cord stapled carefully along the inside provides safe electricity from outside the stall. The last light in the back is a daylight fluorescent bulb on a timer. This provides a close approximation to daylight for 12 hours a day, and a darker night time. The heat lamps still glow but the bright white light is off at night. I have a theory that this helps to prepare the young birds for the daytime cycles better than either constant dark or light. Since bird's hormones are regulated by hours of daylight, I feel its important to have as close as possible to the outside world, even in the brooder.
So there it is. All that is left to do is to hang a couple of waterers and its usable. The entire process took an afternoon with my wonderful Wifes helping hand.

View from the back corner

Here you see the chicken wire stapled behind the stall bars

Wiring for the heat lights and daylight bulb

Shot of the lowered ceiling

The 2x12 holding bedding inside when the door opens

Portable turkey holding pen

We needed an easy way to transport  and hold the turkeys from pasture to processing area on processing day. Not wanting to spend any money on the task to buy real poultry cages, I  chose to just build one. The back of the gator made a nice size to hold a few turkeys, so I boxed it in with 2 pallets and a few boards across the top, then a pallet and string for a door. Wolla.. a nice portable turkey pen!

It worked great on the last processing day, except for when Hunter tried to put a rooster in. As soon as Hunter turned his back the rooster slipped through the pallet boards and ran away! For turkeys it worked really well though. For the next day I might replace the pallet in the back with a piece of plywood. That would be lighter and easier to handle. 

A few toms waiting in the portable pen

Frustrated heritage turkeys

Well there they are... Frustrated and unwilling to jump the new fencing to cross the gate. Will this last? Only time will tell, but so far so good.

Containing HeritageTurkeys - take 4 ?

So far one of the most insurmountable problems on our farm has been just how to keep our heritage Narragansett turkeys in somewhat of a confined area (away from our house and on our property). These turkeys can, unlike their commercial over bred unnatural cousins fly quite well.  I have seen them take off and soar for a good 50 yards at 10 feet high without even being startled. I suspect their max flight is at least twice that. While is is quite impressive to see your flock of turkeys take flight together and soar past you... it is also very concerning.

Why? There are several reasons to contain heritage turkeys:

• They can be aggressive

The turkeys are large birds and the rules of nature say that size matters. The tom turkeys are large enough and aggressive enough to attack our dog, a medium sized springer spaniel. We had this problem once before when we were testing the Narragansett breed and decided to give that turkey away after it attacked our dog and became aggressive around our small children. Turkeys do NOT make good pets with small animals or children! Nevertheless this breed is also the tastiest and hardiest of the heritage breeds we have tried. So, the challenge is to keep the turkeys away from the living areas of the farm.

• They make a mess

As you can guess, turkeys being larger mean they eat more and poop more. They also tend to be quite human friendly meaning they hang out in the areas where people go. This is a bad combination for walkways, doorsteps, patios, etc.  Turkey poop is very valuable as fertilizer, but not on my patio!

• They dominate over other birds

Their size also causes problems with the chickens. Being twice the size or more than a chicken means the turkeys run the show when they intermix. The chickens and even the ducks are driven away so the turkeys have first chance at any food or hunting. This presents a problem for chickens that marginally get enough natural nutrition in the winter months anyway.

• They can escape

Since they fly so well, I occasionally find turkeys in the neighbors yards. This is quite rare but does happen. If we don't learn to contain the turkeys on our property now they could decide that a neighbors house is more attractive then our and go visiting as a flock. Not a way to win friends!

• They are prey

Even though aggressive, turkeys are birds of prey. If left alone I suspect a decent sized dog could feast on one quite easily if provoked. There is a list of predators that would love to find a turkey away from the safety of our land.

So, our quest continues to find a way to contain these birds. Why don't we just clip their wings? Clipping is painless and prevents them from getting off the ground more than a hop. The reason we hesitate is our goal of not altering our animals unnaturally. One reason to stick to this is the predator problem. If they were ever under attack, flight is their means of escape. In this sense, by altering nature, we again become responsible for providing protection completely. As with other situations, the more we do against nature, the more we have to do to sustain.

So, here is a new idea. I have noticed through studying the birds behavior that they really do not normally fly over a 4 foot woven wire fence. my theory is that unless they are escaping in fear, these birds do not wish to fly over nor hop over smoothing this high. They will, however, freely hop ON a gate or cross beam and then hop down. Its apparently hopping OVER that they don't do. Do to this in their nature, when the birds come into our yard it is by hopping on the gates and hopping down as two steps. I have never seen them hop over a fence in 2 years of raising them.  So, the thought hit me... why not block off landing on the gates? So that's what I did yesterday. I mounted some light fencing material on top of each gate or board that is a landing spot. If my theory is correct, this should severely limit the occasions of turkeys in our yard.

Here are some pictures to show what was done. keep in mind this is temporary... if the idea works out we will look for a more permanent method.

On  the main gate I used orange plastic safety fencing. This has no body of itself, but that might be good because it will be a constant nuisance to the birds if they try to roost instead of chicken wire that pushed down and stays. This is also lighter, and perhaps the color a bit scary to the birds.

For the small gate I used thicker 1 inch wire that doesn't need support. This piece was a leftover from the garden fencing.

I wove a couple of fiberglass posts into the chicken wire that is around the sheep shelter. without this the turkeys would push the chicken wire down and sit on it to roost.

The finished product. Might look weird but maybe it will work!

This is an example of the woven wire field fencing that the turkeys will not jump over, even though a building is on one side and a large mound of dirt on the other.

Containing Turkeys - an idea

Long consideration of the problem with the turkeys has brought an idea to mind. The problem is that the turkeys have learned that its possible to fly over the electric fence without trouble. they now pass back and forth at will. being flock animals, as soon as one decides to jump fence, they all soon follow. i can chase them back and feed them in the coop, but as soon as they are done eating they fly right back to the sheep shelter to roost or to the orchard to roam.

What i noticed though is that they actually like the orchard now. amongst the young trees and sheep shelter they seem to feel safe and at home. In comparison, the coop is foreign to where they would roost in the wild. This got me to thinking about WHY they keep leaving the coop and WHY they stay in the orchard rather than in our yard as the previous flocks did.


The answer would seem to be found in their instincts. They don't roam in the open pasture in the heat of the day, and they only roam to cross it or to forage for food. otherwise they hang out under shelter of some sort, and prefer green grass. This mimics what a wild turkey would do.


So,,, it makes sense to stop trying to contain them by force, and instead contain them by making their area more appealing than any other. This would require building trees and shade. I say building because planting trees would be better but takes too long to get to the point that it would be useful. So building trees or something like trees seems best.


The home built trees could be placed along side the orchard so the birds could roam the orchard but be amongst the cover of their 'tree'. moving the coop nearby and surrounding it with electric fence again would keep the sheep out and provide a dry place to eat the poultry food we supplement with.

Now I just need some good designs for home built artificial trees :)

Turkeys win this one

So much for my turkey containment attempts! This is turning into quite the challenge.

Raising animals and plants properly has thus far turned out to be the single most challenging venture of my career. Far more complex than anything in computer sciences, marketing, managing people, artificial intelligence.. Etc. Farming done right requires intelligence, understanding, patience, intuition, and overall wisdom above any other profession I have been involved in!

Turkey trouble - containment

It appears I need to do a bit of "adjusting" to my turkey containment idea. We came home this evening to find the turkeys in the orchard. I chased them back to their pen, which was pretty easy to do. But then not an hour later we look over the pasture to see turkeys in flight heading back to the orchard.

Apparently at this age the turkeys still have no trouble flying when there is a perceived need.  They are beautiful when in flight, but its a disappointing site none the less.

When we come up with a new idea on this, we'll share it. for now, I will keep chasing them back when they "fly the coop".

The new turkey pen Works (mostly)

Who says you cant contain heritage turkeys?!?!


Well, its partially true.


We are having decent success so far. About a month ago we finished work on the large turkey hoop house (its 14x16), build from 4 cattle panels, 2  16' pressure treated skids, a few 2x4, and lots of chicken wire.  I still need to post the pics of the construction.


The first step was to get the turkeys to stay in the coop happily. After repairing the damage from the sheep (see an earlier blog post) the hoop house was finally working well. The turkeys stayed inside the hoop house for about 2 weeks day and night. I moved it around the pasture once or twice a day. Then we added a nesting / storage box inside. That caused a little problem because the turkeys would stand and walk on the nesting box, making quite the mess and smell. This brought us to pursue the next step.. true pasture raising.


I have a plan for the sheep /. turkey pasture to split it into thirds with electric lines and rotate the water, sheep, and turkeys across the three paddocks. Not knowing much about containing flying birds with short fences, it seemed prudent to experiment on a smaller scale first.


Attempt one failed miserably! I tried the fiberglass straight posts and half inch braided electric fencing wire. I put 2 strands of wire across about a foot apart. This was driven by a solar powered fence charger.  Unfortunately the turkeys saw the big spaces and would run up and right through the wire without getting zapped at all!  That was obviously not going to work.


Attempt two was with the rigid plastic posts that had molded in wire holders and metal spikes at the bottom. This allows much closer spacing. with a wire every few inches, the birds were cautious about e jumping through and when the y got close it would zap them  successfully! after a few minutes the birds were "contained" successfully.


This lasted for about 3 days perfectly. On the third night I watered them late and noticed the feeder was low but didn't want to take the time to refill it in the dark so I left it. On the fourth day, when we were heading out to check on them, the birds saw me coming and immediately took to the air and flew right over the electric fence to get to me! They were hungry! Fortunately they followed right back and happily gobbled the food I brought.


this showed me that while it is possible to contain heritage turkeys in a pen with 3 foot fences, it only works when they are happy! If they get spooked or hungry or unhappy for any particular reason, they will easily fly out.  This still seems manageable, and I am considering changing to the 4 foot posts with more strands of wire when we build the paddocks. For now, they are happily contained in their pen once again.


As a side note, These birds LOVE greens! all the grass inside the pen has just about been eaten in 3 days. They actually prefer green fresh grass to the "perfect" bird food. I hope we can get the grass growing thicker soon and the pasture finished so that can have all the fresh grass they want!

Grandma?

When we decided to repair the back fence of the horse pasture, even grandma go in the act. Here she is durinf her first evee tractor driving lesson!

Creating a better pig pasture

Today we took on a big project. In the corner of the property near the chicken coop has been a sizeable brush pile since we moved here. We always planned on burning it but never got around to doing it. Fortunately, there is a better use of this brush!

We decided to move it all into the pig pen to give them more of a pasture feel. There are no trees in the pig pen yet, so this will provide a little of whats missing. Slowly we want to do everything we can do to make this place more "natural".

the brush was piled up against the horse arena fencing in a long row.  Hopefully this will provide some place to dig, perhaps small animals will move in for cover, etc.  Only time will tell.

Additonally I connected a nozzle to a hose tied to the tposts, and installed a water timer. It is set to run fresh water a few minutes each day to keep a mud pond for the pigs. Having constant fresh water, but not too much, should keep this place fairly clean and desease free.  It will take a while to get hte adjustment right. In the summer, this will be the hang out spot! (as you may know, pigs do not sweat, they must use water and/or mud applied to their bodies to keep cool and block the sun. Its a sort of sunscreen mudpack.  This is probably why pigs have hte reputation of being "dirty", but they are actually very clean animals, they just have to use mud to block the heat and sun.)

Here are some pics of the water / mud hole. If you look closley you can se the nozzle tied to the top of hte center tpost.

Heres a pic in the daylight showing the water flow. We have dubbed this "Pig Springs"

Sheep Shelter

We wanted to provide a place for the sheep to get out of bad weather or too much sun, and a place to give birth next year. Instead of building from scratch, we partially closed in the old horse lean to that was in this pasture. While not really a "barn" it does seem to provide protection from the weather. We will fill the interior with straw thick enough to be a nice soft bed.  The overall size if about 10x16ft, the size of a small bedroom.

Here's the kids checking it out before we cleaned up the tools.