[Carl Russell]

This is the way it looked in September. F250 with 16′ gooseneck stock trailer. Now I have a F350 Diesel with standard tranny.

I used to have my horse hauled, then keep them on the job. With the family and ongoing farm activities, I just can’t have the animals away from home anymore. I really find having the trailer to be a huge benefit. I can keep all the equipment I’m using right in there, and just load the horses and go. 16′ lets me load log cart and horses with harnesses on. Somewhat costly, but certainly ads functionality.

I used to haul them on a 1938 3 tom GMC with flatbed and side boards, during 1980-90’s. That was a blast, ad worked great, but the old girl just didn’t last. I dream about getting something like that again. Hauling hay, logs, lumber, saw dust, fuelwood, and animals can be of great value.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Go get him Bill!!!!

[Carl Russell]

Sorry Bill. Sounds like feeding is too good for them to be distracted by the liver.

Sounds a lot like weasel, but the numbers seem so high I have doubts, as they tend to be so solitary.

I trapped 6 mink out of my chicken coop one winter, so that seems more likely to me…. several attackers. The fact that the heads are still on makes me doubt coons or fisher.

The minks we had were just stealing eggs though. New pullets weren’t laying for crap… or so we thought, then one bird was killed… by a weasel, as I caught him, but then I noticed the carcass being chewed on, so I set the trap…. mink. Then I saw one leaving the coop one day… no dead chickens… set the trap… another mink, then the egg production shot way up. In all 6 mink, but they never killed a bird.

We did catch a mink after slaughtering a bunch of turkeys one night though.

Bill, any snow? Tracks? Entry site? Mink, and weasels will sometimes find a rotten spot in the floor boards, maybe where mice have already been traveling. Setting a Konabare at such an opening will work too. Mink will go into a hole just because it is a hole, but if you can find their definite entry site they are so habitual that you should get them pretty reliably.

I know how this sucks, especially with frozen pipes etc., there’s hardly enough time to do what needs to be done anyway, then to throw this on top. These predators are wicked crafty, and can be a real hard time to solve.

Good luck, Carl

[Carl Russell]

Sure fire solution is set a hav-a-heart with the fresh liver from one of the dead chickens. You will definitely catch the perp. All of those predators will live on the blood meal for 24 hrs then return to either kill more, or eat on the carcasses. If some of the bodies were piled up, as if they were gathered, it is likely a coon. If just heads eaten off likely a weasel, or perhaps mink or fisher. Fishers are not that likely to just eat blood meals as they are big enough that they can eat, or transport, then eat the entire carcass quickly.

Either way I would set a coon sized trap, as that number of dead makes me think there were a couple of animals. Weasels couldn’t eat that much, and weasels and minks usually travel alone, whereas coons often travel in numbers.

The trap is also good, as if you are at all obvious, your perps will not come near.

Shot gun for sure. Hard to hit a small animal moving fast in the dark with a 22. Furthermore I’d rather have them critically wounded, or dead than scared of lightly wounded. I had a limping fox around for years because I thought the 22 was up to the task.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Mac;22682 wrote:

I hate adding to older threads, …..Mac

There are no old threads here, otherwise I would erase them. Someday we may archive some of these, and therefore virtually close them, but this is an open forum, and there is room for everybody to participate. We all benefit from having new people enter these discussions.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Thanks Geoff.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

near horse;22658 wrote:

Hey Mark,

Strobes AND a Travolta leisure suit? I thought part of your reasoning for using lights was to “keep customers from freaking out”? That leisure suit will destroy any chance of that happening.

We have some of those cheap solar lights – they sort of glow more than light up. Could be we bought the cheapest kind.

I have used solar motion detector flood lights on the house for some time. They have stronger light, and a large battery, a solar panel about 8×8″, and work great. I think they make the style without the motion detector, and a switch.

I don’t think you’ld want nor need the motion detectors, but a few well positioned LED solar lights, of the better variety, will give off a good amount of light in a strategic location.

Sorry, no idea about cost….

Carl

[Carl Russell]

The 16th looks good, and 7pm is ok, but 7:30pm would probably be even better.

Carl

Brad has been indisposed with family obligations and travel. He may be able to reply today.

[Carl Russell]

Mark, I can understand the idea of having a light on the sleigh, but you might find it about the same money, and less head-ache to just buys some LED Solar yard lights, and place them strategically along the trail.

It would give a sense of not being total darkness, yet have some ambiance of riding through the dark with the little light in the distance.

Of course having the string lights on the sleigh is also a nice festive idea, but you may be able to find solar powered LED String lights too.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Countymouse;22611 wrote:

If I were to plant an hierloom variety of corn next to my neighbors non-GE corn, there would be cross pollination as well. About the seeds, I find it hard to believe that a farmer who really wants to grow an heirloom variety of some thing can’t find any seed. Maybe not variety X,Y, or Z, but to find at least one heirloom variety is not hard. I certainly haven’t had a hard time finding seed, although I only need enough to plant a acre at a time… IF the seeds don’t sell, can you blame seed companies for not trying to sell them??? Again, are these companies supposed to ensure that each seed they produce is inferier to heirloom varieties so that farmers would pick the heirloom varieties??? Pretty silly.
…..

….. Genetic engineering is simply another tool, and I place the blame of GE failures on the operator(s), not the tool.[/quote]

So, I will just add that my points about the availability of seed had less to do with the few of us, and in pure volume of food produced the heirloom market is very small, who are trying to grow food with free choice seed, and more to do with a food system that becomes dependent on capital investments in infrastructure required to produce the genetic-material-du-jour.

The fascinating thing about life on Earth is that there is a natural flow of energy from the sun into all things living, which is free for all to engage in, and it works well with no investment. As participants we can choose how much we want to invest to increase productivity, but when we make choices that require brick and mortar, computers, and significant energy inputs just to get the seed we need to start a plant, it JUST DOESN”T MAKE SENSE.

As so many other modern processes the theory as science goes is fascinating, and fun to work with, but in the scheme of life on Earth it is little more than a intellectual rabbit hole. I can truly see the supposed benefits, but the lack of understanding of the natural process of food growth and harvest, and the modern economic addiction to economy of scale and capital investment in infrastructure is a huge cultural barrier. This is not the FAULT of Monsanto et al., nor “Scientists”, but it has been at the root of the negative changes in farming over the last century.

Whether it be GMO, or CFO, the theory that you can amortize the cost of infrastructural investment over the production of large numbers of managed organisms is a failing formula. There are many who make a lot of money under this misconceived notion, but the rest of us and our planet are accumulating huge deficits as a result.

This is the greatest weakest link in the GMO theory as far as I am concerned.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Basically free all three, but 16 and 17 are better, Carl

[Carl Russell]

From observation, I’m not sure that the anti-inflammatory treatment is working, not much change in the constriction of the pupils.

However, when I turned her out today, I let her go first. She ambled out toward a pile of hay, and as soon as I released Ted, about twenty feet behind her, as he, in his usually way, started to trot away from me, she laid her ears back, bucked, and charged off bucking and twisting straight at the garden fence, where she wheeled and skidded to a stop.

She’s got to be able to be seeing pretty well to do that. She also didn’t miss the lane to the barn tonight, although she did lower her head and sniffed several times as she was working her way in slowly.

The jury is still out on the seriousness of this affliction. Vet will be back in a week or so to take a more serious appraisal.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

I miss that frickin’ Vermont. God those were good times. People were so real. I grew up tagging around behind men like that. Man, it makes my soul hurt to the bones watching that. Life gone by. Thanks for posting that again Phil.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Jean;22530 wrote:

Carl and Jen, do your horses blink a lot? I was watching Anna Mule and the littles today while they were getting their hoofs trimmed. Anna Mule blinks (she has uveitis) 50 to 60 times more than the minis. Someone suggested I use eye drops, because the blinking is from dry eyes. I had never really paid any attention to the blinking before.

Anna Mule does not seem to be bothered by her very bad vision when we are working. She does not like to be in with the bigs because all we think she sees is their huge shadows and that freaks her out a bit. So far she has not been spooky in harness. However she is more relaxed when I talk to her about what we are doing and don’t rely on the lines alone.

Jean, I have never noticed excessive blinking. The weeping and gunky eyes, or a half-shut eye are symptoms that I have noticed, but always believed they were symptoms from flies, dirt, or injury, etc. I had never heard of Uveitis.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

For me the concept of not messing with nature has less to do with the process of genetic modification than it does with the system that we depend on to produce our food.

As Andy mentioned, so many modern varieties are the result of genetic manipulations, apples, chickens, horses, potatoes, corn, etc. The crux of the issue for me is whether or not I can go into the root cellar, grab a potato, plant it, and grow the same tubers I harvested, or gather eggs from the coop and grow out birds that match the parents, or use a simple procedure of grafting scions to grow cultivated apples on native root stock.

The human endeavor of cultivation, providing nutrients and appropriate environmental conditions is fundamental to the act of farming. Take a natural plant, prune it, reduce competition, provide access to required nutrients, and we all know we can get superior growth out of it, as apposed to what might have occurred naturally.

This process is a huge part of food security. The next part is having access to livestock and plant varieties that can be reproduced consistently, as a part of the natural propagation, to demonstrate the desirable characteristics of the previous generation.

We can also take two unrelated genotypes and produce offspring that demonstrate hybrid vigor. But the next generation will not reproduce the same characteristics. So to ensure hybrid vigor, we become dependent on an auxiliary infrastructure.

The next step is to manipulate the genetic code of an organism. This requires even more complex infrastructure, increased cost, and significant energy inputs.

These are the “problem solvings” that I referred to in my earlier post. As food producers and consumers we become dependent on an industry that controls the very germ of life that we need to feed ourselves.

The questionable health and environmental affects are serious enough, but for me the loss of control of the free access to a natural resource is beyond serious. Especially as energy costs are sure to increase, and the facilities required to uphold this industry will cost more to maintain, we leave ourselves open to having no access, and no control over what has been our birth-right as earth born organisms.

There is something seriously wrong with a scenario where an organism must sign a paper and buy rights before it can reach out and consume a reservoir of energy (food/animal/plant) that was heretofore available merely at the expense of energy required to grab it.

Humans have certainly designed into our modern lives lots of “improved” genotypes, which do require extra effort on our part to keep alive, but at least most of them will breed true, and there is no patent on their genetic make-up.

Carl

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